Re: A new practical problem with invariant sections?
On 13 Feb 2006, Craig Sanders outgrape:
> On Sun, Feb 12, 2006 at 10:44:51PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> What if he wants to further distribute the stuff to other people
>> who are using a device like his? I mean, sharing stuff useful to me
>> is one of the prime reasons I like free software -- if stuff is
>> useful, I can share.
>
> why are you obsessing with a convenience issue and pretending that
> it has ANY BEARING AT ALL on freedom issues? it doesn't.
Err, because I do not see this as a matter of mere
convenience. If I spend a significant time on the road with my
device, and I need the manual when I am away from my laptop, this is
not just a geek "hah hah. look at what I got on my phone" thing.
Why is being able to distribute this this amy more of "mere
convenience" than, say, wmbattery? anyone can just cat
/proc/acpi/BAT0/state, no? At a more extreme end: why do we need gcc?
or any other compiler? Is it not just a convenience as opposed to
writing in machine language to the bare metal, like real programmers
do?
Any matter of freedom, unless it is related to food, shelter,
and basic survival, can be couched as a matter of cenvenience; so I
am very vary of such arguments.
> the answer to your disingenuous question is obvious. he gives them
> the entire document, and the recipient does whatever they want/need
> to get it onto their PDA. if they physically can't do what they want
> with it (e.g. because of limitations in the device/medium they're
> trying to import it to), then that is just an unfortunate reality in
> a world governed by physical laws rather than wishes and magic.
But if it were not for the GFDL, we would not have to make our
users face an impossibility, or figure out how to strip things from
binary packages in order to get them to install. As a user, seems
like a significant obstacle to distribution and use, from my
perspective.
> if there is a particular process which can shoehorn the document
> into the limited device, then it's perfectly OK to distribute the
> document along with with instructions (whether human-executable
> instructions or a script/program) for doing so. i.e. this meets the
> requirements of the "patch clause" in the DFSG.
But I can no longer distribute the modified copy; I can tell
people how to modify their copy, and then build the package, so they
can then do the same.
In other words, I cannot distribute the modified version , I
can only tell people how to modify it for themselves. DOes not quite
meet the freedom requirement, in my view.
manoj
--
Shick's Law: There is no problem a good miracle can't solve.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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