Re: generated source files, GPL and DFSG
On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 10:48:43PM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> We know perfectly well that the NVidia driver is in the condition it's
> in partly because its development is funded by a profit-seeking entity
> that has no wish to destabilize its market position, either by making
> it easier for a competitor to produce a graphics chip to which the
> driver could easily be ported, or by losing its privileged
> relationship to Microsoft when an inspired Linux hacker reworks the
> driver and related bits of the Linux graphics subsystem to get triple
> the FPS of the Windows (or XBox) version. (I think triple is probably
> an exaggeration, but there's room for improvement.) It's very clever
> of NVidia to support both a fully proprietary Linux driver and a
> driver we can call "open source" if we don't look too closely. Do we
> mind being manipulated this way? A little, but we work with it.
In other words, we'll take something as source that we know isn't,
because we like nVidia. My reaction is "fine, whatever"--but don't
try to change the very definition of "source" to include what nVidia
is giving us.
If looking the other way and pretending a something is source when it
clearly isn't is really what Debian wants to do, I don't have the energy
to fight that particular case--but it seems to me that the only argument
actually presented against "preferred form for modification" seems to be
"we want to be able to call nVidia's obfuscated code source, and that
definition doesn't let us do that".
--
Glenn Maynard
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