Scripsit Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>
> An XML score satisfies all these requirements as a way of
> representing music.
We're not talking about music; we're talking about *sound
recordings*. All the XML scores in the world will not allow me to
recreate a particular sound recording (made with real live musicians,
in the case it contains music). Therefore, an XML score is not
source.
> Samples and recordings are more difficult, mainly because the concept of
> "revision" doesn't really exist, per se. One possibility is just to do
> a hex dump -- it's as straightforwardly editable with a hex editor as
> _anything_ is, after all
Any opaque format is straightforwardly editable with a hex editor. If
you accept it for sound recordings, yoy should accept it for every
other kind of data as well, and the whole GFDL concept of
opaque/transparent formats goes down the drain. (Which means that
yours is not an interpretation of "transparent" that is likely to be
used by a court).
> Simply being able to cut up the sound and insert your own pre-recorded sound
> effects is probably enough to satisfy that requirement actually
Says who? So you call it free even if you can't remove something?
> * you can revise it with a text editor easily enough
Only for certain kinds of changes. That's not enough.
> to be "is Anthony My name" is easy, eg;
Not without losing any semblance of sensible prosody.
> * the format's been designed to make it as easy as possible to modify,
> not arranged to thward anything
"As easy as possible" is still not easy enough to quialify as "possible".
> The questions at hand here are can you license sound stuff under the
> GNU FDL, and, if not, can the GNU FDL possible be DFSG-free. I think
> the answer to the first question is yes, and, even ignoring that, I'm
> not really convinced the answer to the second is no.
If it is not possible to license sound under GFDL (which I believe it
is not), then the GFDL says that I must not make a modification of
the work that consists of reading it aloud on a sound recording. I
think that's quite easily non-free.
--
Henning Makholm "That's okay. I'm hoping to convince the
millions of open-minded people like Hrunkner Unnerby."
