Re: Source files
On 15/10/15 00:50, Riley Baird wrote:
On Wed, 14 Oct 2015 23:47:02 +0200
Francesco Poli<invernomuto@paranoici.org> wrote:
The alternatives you propose are vague at best.
For further details on what I think about the definition of source,
anyone interested may read my essay:
http://www.inventati.org/frx/essays/softfrdm/whatissource.html
That's a good essay! Hopefully, something like that will become the
reference that Debian actually uses in the future.
Yes, good work, Francesco.
I have some concerns, though:
The preferred form of a work for making modifications to it.
This fails to address the issues raised earlier in this thread:
What about CVS headers?
Well, the file with the CVS headers is probably what you would use
for making modifications.
What about patches created using quilt?
quilt is a version control system (in form of patches). IMHO it doesn't
affect for the definition of source. You don't edit the file using quilt,
you use vi, emacs, notepad… and store the changes using quilt, but
you could as well be using tar(1).
The source is the file that you edit. It may be distributed as original
file + a number of patch files, but that's orthogonal.
The person whose preference should be taken into account is the
one who last modified the version of the work under consideration.
If he/she prefers to modify the work in a given form, then that
form is the source code for the work.
Company A writes a program A* in C++ and gives binaries away under a
free license to Person B. Person B has excellent knowledge of how to
edit binary executables and changes it to create program B*. It would follow that the binary executable
is source.
Yes. The source for B* is the binary. The source for A* is the C++ files.
(I added the names above for clarification)
However, that shouldn't lead to the that compiling a program and
changing two bytes with an hex editor makes the original files no longer
be “source”.
In most cases, we should also look at the source of A* when working with
B*, at least if B* is expected to be free software.
One completely different thing is when nobody has some form of
the work any longer. That form cannot be preferred for making
modifications, since it no longer exists. In this case, the actual
source is the preferred form for making modifications, among the
existing ones.
I write a program in C++ and release the binaries under a free license.
The binaries are not the source form. But five years later, when I lose
the USB which contained the only copy of the C++ code, the binaries
become source.
I'm most worried about authors falsely claiming «I lost the source» as
an excuse for not disclosing them.
I'm also not too keen on the last part about space-inefficient form for
audiovisual works. Which once more shows that software licenses are not
the best suited license for media files :)
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