Re: Social Contract GR's Affect on sarge
Removed Theodore Ts'o from the CC list, since he didn't ask to be CC'd.
On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 12:54:14PM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Well, now, I'm not entirely convinced of this. Could a similar argument
> not be used on JPEG's or PNG's? Do we have *some* reasonable way to
A similar argument has been made. This is why I'm tending to think
it's unreasonable to expect source for everything. I do think every
*other* requirement (except for DFSG#2) applies to other data.
I think that firmware is no different than any other program, and should
require source, but I'm not so sure about other types of software (such
as PNGs and fonts).
Some have argued that DFSG#2 doesn't apply to PNGs, etc. because it uses
the word "program". I don't think the language is quite that clear. If
there's disagreement on this, changing DFSG#2 from "The program ..." to
"Programs ..." might help.
I would tend to think that there's no need to define that further--"program"
seems to obviously include /bin/ls and firmware blobs, and exclude documentation,
fonts[1] and images--but the RM is apparently claiming that the old SC didn't
apply to firmware, as if firmware isn't software (a very strange claim, IMO).
Of course, this wouldn't change the need to remove non-free firmware or
GFDL'd documentation.
[1] Oops. Hinted fonts have programs in them. I'm not even sure where to
start on that.
--
Glenn Maynard
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