On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:01:02 -0400 Joe Smith wrote: > > "Francesco Poli" <frx@firenze.linux.it> wrote in message > 20070328010013.08c6f721.frx@firenze.linux.it">news:20070328010013.08c6f721.frx@firenze.linux.it... > >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... > > Yes, I'm really starting to question the idea of source. > > It seems to me that the "preferred form of modification" seems to > depend on the desired modification. It can change form after someone makes some kind of modifications (think of someone who automatically translates a Fortran program to C++ and then goes on modifying the C++ code: in that case the source form for the modified program is really C++ code!). But, as long as you consider the "original" work, there is one form which is preferred above the others, maybe because other suitable forms can be generated from it (in the example of the Fortran program, the source form for the original work is Fortran code: in case you want to make the modifications that makes you prefer the C++ form, you can always generate the latter from Fortran...). > > Since this is Debian, I will use the example of Toy Story. Let us say > that Steve Jobs inexplicably decides he wants to release Toy Story as > a open-source movie, and manages to convince the rest of the people > at Disney that this was a good idea. It *is* a good idea, but this is another issue... ;-) > > Thinking about only the video portion, what would we call source? > > I can see three answers to this: > 1. The model files, lighting, and animation information. This can be > used to regenerate the movie. > 2. The original raw frames of the rendered video. > 3. The compressed final video stream. [...] > So which one(s) should be considered source? I would prefer having the 3D models and related stuff and I guess the original authors would use that form, should they make modifications to the movie. Of course, for simple modifications, I could decide to use the compressed video stream: in those cases the source for the *modified* work might be the compressed video... I don't see any inconsistency in that. The fact that rebuilding Toy Story from source (that is, from 3D models) requires huge resources is a problem for the original authors too, and has little to do with source definition. Have you ever rebuilt the VTK library[1] on a 400 MHz Pentium II machine? I can say (from personal experience) that it takes quite a long time, but that doesn't mean that VTK source is not C++ code... [1] http://packages.debian.org/unstable/source/vtk -- 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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