Re: GPLed software with no true source. Was: Bug#402650: ITP: mozilla-foxyproxy
On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-30-01 at 03:30 -0800, Don Armstrong wrote:
> > The bright line is actually pretty straight forward: Do you modify the
> > file with syntactic whitespace or the file without? Is it preferable
> > to modify the file without the keyword expansion or with?
>
> That's not a very good line at all. I don't modify source
> LZ-compressed, yet that is how I distribute most of my code and how
> most of the source in Debian is distributed.
Since you can transform between the two bidirectionally and the method
to convert between LZ compressed forms is publicly available and well
documented, they're effectively equivalent.
> We're talking about a case where a developer has used a lossy
> compression algorithm (which I think we all agree is foolish and
> useless) that can be more-or-less reversed with tools readily
> available in most programmers' toolset.
>
> It's not run through an obfuscator, nor is it object code or virtual
> machine code, nor is it code generated from a higher-level language.
I've personally not looked at the code in question at all; I'm merely
responding to Joey's message.
However,evenremovingthewhitespacefromaprogramcanmakeitsignficantlymoredifficulttodebugandcomprehend,eventhoughitcanbereversedwithtoolsthatarereadilyavailable.
Don Armstrong
--
CNN/Reuters: News reports have filtered out early this morning that US
forces have swooped on an Iraqi Primary School and detained 6th Grade
teacher Mohammed Al-Hazar. Sources indicate that, when arrested,
Al-Hazar was in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square and
a calculator. US President George W Bush argued that this was clear
and overwhelming evidence that Iraq indeed possessed weapons of maths
instruction.
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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