Re: anti-tarball clause and GPL
On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 02:14:38AM +0200, Guillem Jover wrote:
> On Wed, 2019-07-24 at 00:49:24 +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:
> > ##################
> > I do not consider a flat tarball to be a preferred form for modification.
> > Thus, like any non-source form, it must be accompanied by a way to obtain
> > the actual form for modification. There are many such ways -- unless you
> > distribute the software in highly unusual circumstances, a link to a
> > network server suffices; see the text of the GPL for further details.
> > ##################
> > * comments giving rationale for a change tend to be written as VCS commit
> > messages
> This concept keeps being put forward from time to time, and it keeps
> making little sense to me. The "preferred form of the work for making
> modifications to it" is the actual source files, that's the work. A
> tarball is a way to *transport* and *disseminate* those files, it's
> not the work, and people do not edit the tarball. A VCS can be used
> to *record* those modifications, or to *transport* and *disseminate*
> them, in the same way you could do with a series of patches. But
> "modifying" the VCS is a by-product of having modified the actual
> source.
By this logic, a pile of .c files with comments removed or preprocessed
with cpp would be allowed as well. The VCS is also a means to store
human-readable comments.
Another piece of [meta]data that a flat tarball lacks is authorship
information.
Meow!
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