Mark Rafn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > > The .psd is the source. Some people prefer to hack on binary code > > too, but this is really the same case as that one, except that more > > people hack .gif than binary code. > > So I cannot release the GIF freely, given that the PSD no longer exists?
I didn't say that. What I said was that, in my opinion, there is something wrong with including it as part of GPL'd software: at least, in the case where you had anything at all to do with the destruction of the psd. The GPL contains no "I couldn't get ahold of the source" exception, and I see no reason it should. > Interesting. I suspect we have some things currently in debian that > violate the GPL if this is the common consensus. Indeed, and perhaps I would be induced to change my mind, but only by arguments, not by repeating "the consequences would be absurd!". > Additionally, consider that the work was for hire, so I'm the copyright > holder, and I didn't keep the psd. Is this gif file forever proprietary > because I cannot provide "source"? Again, again, again, I'm not interested here in the definition of "free" or "proprietary"; just with the copyleft. In the context of the copyleft, if you destroy the source, the object code does not somehow mutate into source, and as a result the object code simply cannot be part of a copylefted program. I can see no good reason for distinguishing C code from .xcf files here. > > So we must judge the bitmaps alone to *not* meet the source code > > requirement (whether or not they have in fact been modified from what > > the source first produced), and this must be true not just for the > > person who did the tweaking, but for everyone who got the bitmaps from > > them. > > In the case of actual edits, though (I take bitmaps produced > algorithmically and make significant bitmap updates), this leads to the > strange requirement to provide some bizarre "source" files that don't > produce anything near what you're distributing. Why is this bizarre? It seems perfectly reasonable to me. Nothing in the GPL says that source must be somehow automatically translated into object.
