Re: Let's stop feeding the NVidia cuckoo
Andrew Suffield writes:
> On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 12:36:30PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > Requiring layered formats for
> > source is also going to result in PNGs being non-free in many cases.
>
> This sort of mindless sophistry accomplishes nothing. Requiring source
> does not make programs non-free. Failing to provide source is what
> makes programs non-free. The contents of the Debian archive is not
> non-free just because we require source.
Who is being a mindless sophist? Take, for example,
/usr/share/doc/doc-iana/cctld/jp/sakamoto-sig.jpg from doc-iana,
currently in main. It is a JPEG of a signature. We cannot distribute
Sakamoto-san. The image was produced in Photoshop, which means there
may not be a precursor file that is freely manipulable. What is
source? The current interpretation is that it simply is not relevant
to the freedoms we want to serve, but if we change that
interpretation, it because non-free due to the changed interpretation.
Or/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-html/MindTerm-SSH-HOWTO/leech.jpg, which is
a screen capture of an apparently non-free FTP tool. LeechFTP itself
is the apparent source under your argument. Or will someone be
obliged to make a new bitmap image capture -- obviously not really the
source, but good enough to manipulate?
A number of the (old) HOWTOs contain JPEG images; it is plausible that
the files used to create them no longer exist. What then?
ntp-doc includes a collection of JPEG photos of products that
presumably work with ntpd. What is the source for those images?
splint-doc includes a tangential photographicl image of a wall at the
start of the Splint manual. Will the Debian maintainer be obliged to
remove that?
> In most cases, requiring layered formats for source is going to result
> in getting layered formats for source. It is obviously the correct
> thing to be distributing; upstreams who have it but don't distribute
> it probably just didn't think of it.
In a significant number of cases, requiring layered formats for source
will mean that DDs must create DFSG-sanitized "orig" tarballs by
removing images that upstream distributes. There may be no layered
precursor file; the precursor file may no longer exist; or it may be
in a non-free format.
Michael Poole
Reply to: