Re: Let's stop feeding the NVidia cuckoo
On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 03:47:32PM -0500, David Nusinow wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 03:25:48PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 12:02:50PM -0800, Ben Johnson wrote:
> > > Although the DFSG do not envisage the issue, the GPL
> > > does tackle it: "The source code for a work means the
> > > preferred form of the work for making modifications to
> > > it". I am aware the DFSG !== the GPL, nevertheless the
> > > GPL is obviously as good a definition of free software
> > > as any, and whichever your sensibility, open-source or
> >
> > Obfuscated C code is obviously not source, by any sensible definition--
> > any "definition" of the word "source code" that results in obfuscated
> > C code being called "source" is wrong. Since the GPL's definition
> > of "source" is reasonable (in fact, it's one of the only robust
> > definitions of the word that I'm aware of), it handles this.
> >
> > Obfuscated code does not satisfy DFSG#2. I hope nobody seriously
> > disagrees with this.
>
> Let's not be so fast with this. I haven't taken a look at the driver
> source yet, but I think there's a big difference between obfuscating
> the source to your driver and not providing specs to your hardware.
> It seems, from reading Mike's mail, that the latter is more the case
> than the former. I'm not sure how I feel about that with respect to
> the DFSG, but since the hardware is not something that Debian
> distributes I'm currently leaning towards having it not affect the
> Freeness of the driver.
Good point. Similarly, there is a difference between actively
obfuscated "source code" (which isn't the preferred form of
modification), and poorly written code. The latter, although you may
prefer to not modify it, is arguably the preferred form of
modification.
Just because the code doesn't use #defines or enums doesn't
necessarily make it obfuscated; it may just be that Vojkovich sees
that as too indirect, and prefers to write outb(0x3241, 0x51) because
he happens to know the port ID numbers and values off the top of his
head.
Is it *actively* obfuscated, or just not as clean as you would like?
If it is actively obfuscated (has been run through a sed script to
remove whitespace, or similar), then someone needs to ask nv for the
real source.
Is there someplace we can download the code (call it what you like)
without also downloading the rest of X11?
Justin
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