Re: Let's stop feeding the NVidia cuckoo

[Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>]

Matthew Garrett writes:

> MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
> > Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> >> But how do you argue that a hand-crafted binary is sufficiently
> >> modifiable without also admitting the possibility that the output
> >> of a C compiler may be sufficiently modifiable?
> > 
> > I think it depends what the upstream author is using as source.
> > How about you?
> 
> Why does it depend on what the upstream author is using as source? How
> does that affect the recipient's ability to modify the work? 

One of the underpinnings of the Free Software movement is that users
of software should not be made second-class citizens when it comes to
altering the software.  This is what drives the desire to have
"sufficiently modifiable" source, and it is neatly more objective than
a metric of "sufficient modifiability."

Users should have the same opportunities to modify software as its
original author(s) have.  If the original author had to pay for a
non-free tool, or had to study some advanced topic for years to grok
the algorithims, so be it.  If the original author uses C source, it
violates Free Software's principles to expect others to edit the
preprocessor or compiler output to modify the software.

Michael Poole