Re: Games - A question [getting philosophical]
At 01:13 PM 11/29/01 -0600, John Hasler wrote:
>csj writes:
>> We rarely get to see the source code for a novel.
>
>Just as well, since none of us have the compiler anyway.
>
>> The source for a novel is the writer's draft or revision marks.
>
>When you release Free Software do you include all your "drafts" and
>"revision marks" with the source?
>
>You need source code in order to be able to produce derivatives of a
>program because compilation is a one-way hash. When you've got a
>human-readable copy of a novel you have everything you need to be able to
>produce derivatives.
>--
>John Hasler
>john@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
>Dancing Horse Hill
>Elmwood, WI
At the risk of wandering WAAYY out into metaphysics...
surely the novel is a binary? it can't be usefully modified and can only be
read as-is.
It'd have to be made available as a text file (or maybe printed with double
spacing to allow annotation?) to be usefull
Otherwise to make use of it you'd have to either re-type it, or scan and OCR
which sounds analogous to de-compiling a binary to me.
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