Re: GPLed software with no true source. Was: Bug#402650: ITP:mozilla-foxyproxy
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-30-01 at 11:54 -0800, Don Armstrong wrote:
>
>> This refrain keeps getting repeated, but still no one has explained
>> how distributing a form of the work which is _not_ the prefered form
>> for modification satisfies section 3 of the GPL:
>
> So, I think we all readily admit that _some_ transformations on the
> original source (like compression) are acceptable. The distributed
> source code does not need to be bitwise identical with the source edited
> by the developer to be the preferred form.
s/compression/lossless compression/
> I think we'd all be pretty comfortable with some other transforms, like
> \r\n -> \n line ending conversion or character set changes.
The commonality between these changes and lossless compression is that
all are 100% reversible, assuming one knows what transformation
operations have been performed. (Well, the character set changes I
suppose depend on exactly what the original and final versions looked
like; UTF-8 -> ISO 8859-1 is obviously not reversible if the original
was in Japanese.)
Stripping whitespace on the other hand is not reversible. One may be
able to add whitespace back (e.g. with "indent") but there is no
guarantee that the result is identical to the original version of the
file before whitespace stripping.
That said, personally (IANAL) I'd consider whitespace stripping to be a
non-issue. After a change that is trivial for any downstream recipient
of the code to make (running the afore-mentioned "indent"), the
whitespace-stripped code is transformed into a Javascript file that is
functionally identical to the original even if not bit-for-bit
identical. For most people, probably including upstream, the result
would be just as much a "preferred" form for modification as the true
original was. On the other hand, transforming a UTF-8 Japanese document
to ISO 8859-1 would obviously *not* result in something that upstream
(or anyone else) would consider a preferred form for modification.
My main concern in the particular case of mozilla-foxyproxy would be (as
someone else mentioned) that comments in the code may have also been
stripped to save space. I would consider redistribution of such
comment-stripped code to be a violation of the GPL in spirit as well as
in letter.
best regards,
--
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu> Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ Princeton University
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544
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