On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 01:18:32 +0800 Ying-Chun Liu (PaulLiu) wrote: > Michelle Konzack wrote: [...] > > I personaly consider "mp3/mp4" and "ogg" (vorbis, theora, ...) NOT > > as "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". > > > > I asume, that there are nore then one person on the list aggree with > > me. I do not agree. In some cases an OGG file may be the preferred form for making modifications to a work (and hence, by definition, its source form). In other cases, it won't. There's no general rule that states which formats are source and which ones are not. It's not a matter of formats: it's a case-by-case choice. > > > > So whats the prefered form of source. It depends. I cannot answer *in general*. > > > > For "mp3" and "ogg-vorbis" it can be "wav", "flac" or "shn" but what > > about videos? > > Lossless and lossy compression format don't mean anything on preferred > form for modification. Some recorders do record mp3/ogg directly. And > some audio editors do edit mp3/ogg directly. Exactly, and in some cases an author/maintainer *may* prefer to modify a lossy-compressed form directly. In some other cases, he/she *may* prefer working on uncompressed data and recompress afterward... [...] > So, for creative works, Be careful: every copyrighted work is a creative work (just because, roughly speaking, copyright covers the expressions of creativity). Hence programs are creative works, as well, while you seem to think otherwise... > the source is hard to be defined by format. > Not like programs, we can easily know what is machine code and what is > high level language code in most situations. Source code for programs is not always so easily determined as you argue: for instance, imagine a programmer who modifies Perl code, but strips out *all the comments* before distributing the code. The commented Perl code is clearly his/her preferred form for modifications, and hence source code; what gets distributed is instead obfuscated code, which is *not* source. And we could never really know, if he/she publicly claims to modify the uncommented code, while he/she instead modifies the commented code and keeps it secret... In some cases, a programmer may modify machine code by hand. Then, machine code is source code for that work. Of course, more often, machine code is compiled from some higher level language... > We can only ask the > author of the creative works to release their work honestly because in > most situation we can't distinguish the source and binary if the > author is lying. That is true for programs too. Oh well, programs are creative works, hence you already acknowledged this... ;-) > If the last format he has is wav, then he should > release wav. If the last format he has is mp3, then mp3. I'm not sure what you mean by "last format". The point is the preferred form for modifications, and it can be a WAV file or an MP3, or something else, depending on the work we are talking about. As I stated, there's no general rule. [...] > To require the author to use some listed formats for image source or > audio source is impracticable. Indeed! Because what is source for a work, can be a compiled form for another one, and so forth... -- http://frx.netsons.org/doc/nanodocs/etch_workstation_install.html Need to read a Debian etch installation walk-through? ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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