Re: generated source files, GPL and DFSG
>> If upstreams sues you, the freedoms granted by the license texts don't
>> matter much. A court case is a great inconvenience, even if the
>> defendant wins in the end.
>
> Are you missing the point deliberately?
>
> The question was: if we have two examples of source code; one stripped
> of comments by obfuscation and the second one written without comments,
> both released under the same Free Software license, how do you tell,
> which one is free and which one is not?
The first author's intent was to make the creation of derivative works
harder, irrespective of what the license says. This makes the work
non-free (at least I'd rather refrain from using it). In the second
case, the author may just be a suitable skilled developer (either he's
too bad or too good for writing commented source code).
> Jubal, eagerly awaiting the precious moment when we'll require the
> full internal documentation of any software released before
> considering it free.
In order to exercise my right to create derived works, I need to
understand some of the internal workings of the program. From a
practical point of view, software freedom needs some degree of
maintainability.
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