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Re: generated source files, GPL and DFSG



* Matthew Garrett:

>> I think it's not acceptable to yse pregenerated files to prevent
>> software from entering contrib.  (Look at all the Java programs, for
>> instance.)  If there's a povray dependency, the software cannot be
>> included in main.
>
> Yes, but *WHY* do you think that?

It makes it very hard to fix bugs in the pregenerated files.
Look at the gsfonts mess, it's pretty instructive.

> If there existed reasonable ways of modifying Java bytecode to create
> new derivative works, then I'd have fewer qualms about shipping Java
> bytecode without a compiler. But there aren't, so I do.

>From a technical point of view, Java bytecode is as good as
uncommented source code.  The Java-to-bytecode compilers are not very
sophisticated.



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