On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 04:08:41PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote: > Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> wrote: > > On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 10:16:46AM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote: > > > Yes, it's odd, but it's odd in the opposite direction to the one > > you're coming at it from. The unexpected thing is that the binary, or > > jpeg, can *ever* be considered free. Conversely, any argument which > > says jpegs are always free enough, also says the same thing about > > program binaries. There's nothing special about pictures here. > > In the general case, a binary is insufficient - it's too complex for > someone to be able to modify it in any way they want to. In the general > case, a JPEG is modifiable in a way that a binary is not. I strongly disagree with this entirely arbitrary claim about relative difficulty. A binary is modifiable, with considerably more effort than the corresponding source, and with considerable loss of quality by comparison. A jpeg is also modifiable with considerably more effort than the corresponding source, and considerable loss of quality. A jpeg is modifiable in precisely the same way that a binary is - badly, by comparison to the actual source. In the general case, a JPEG is insufficient: it's lacking enough data for someone to be able to modify it in any way they want to. > Programs exist that allow you to read in JPEGs and produce new pieces of > artwork. People use them on a regular basis. No comparable programs > exist for ELF binaries. Nonsense. The programs are called ld, gdb, and binutils in general, and they are definitely used more often than people edit jpegs. Editing jpegs is a Hobson's choice. It's not something that you do if you can get hold of a proper image file. Anybody who does artwork regularly will tell you that. Yeesh, this is like the documentation thing all over again. Are we going to have to go through the litany of months of fruitless debates on the issue just to establish that special pleading doesn't apply to images either? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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