Problem: Obfuscators prohibition in the GPL

[Andrei Sosnin <tomato@zzx.dyn.ee>]

Dear sir/madam,

We  have  had  a  discussion at  debian-russian@lists.debian.org  list
concerning      GPL     and     so-called      "obfuscators"     (like
http://www.stunnix.com/prod/perl-obfus.shtml).  The  discussion was in
Russian.   There were  some  people, who  believed  that applying  the
obfuscator to  the GPL  program is not  covered by GPL,  especially in
case obfuscator was  used by the software author.  Their argument was:
"it is still modifiable".

But we believe, that this phrase:

==========
	The source  code for  a work means  the preferred form  of the
	work for making modifications to it.
==========

prohibits obfuscator usage on GPL  sources (GNU GPL, part 3, paragraph
2).

We'd really like  to know, is it  really true.  And if it  is, then we
think that adding such a question to this page:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

would be much of a help -- e.g. for further reference.

An example:

==========

Q:  I want to use obfuscator on the distributed sources
A: ...

==========

Regards,

--
/Andrei Sosnin/		<tomato@zzx.dyn.ee>
/Sergey Spiridonov/	<spiridonov@gavitec.de>