On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:16:23PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:26:17PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:31:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > Can you remind me of the advantages of NOT interpreting as "object form"
> > > as "any form other than the preferred form for modification"?
> >
> > For the detailed description, see
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200303/msg00131.html
>
> I've read it.
>
> > In a nutshell, I don't know of any reasonable person that would define
> > "object code" as the output of tr a-z A-Z on a text file.
>
> Nice to meet you. :) That is, I'm perfectly willing to accept that as
> an example of "object code" if the only alternative is to call it
> "source code".
Let us consider the output of tr a-z A-Z as _not_ source code
nor object code. This implies that it is not exempted by section 2, and
also not exempted by section 3. So it's not a particularly useful
definition since you would be bound by pure copyright law, and you'd
never be able to redistribute.
Of course, this becomes really silly because I know a lot of
people that run source code through such tranformation tools as
uuencode, tar, and gzip.
Simon
