Matthew Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Wed, 2004-08-25 at 15:25 -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: > >> Sure we can. I might convince you that they're in the wrong place -- >> and certainly debian-legal is the right place for that discussion. Or >> you might convince me that they are in the right place. Neither of >> those is an axiomatic belief. > > No, I don't think debian-legal /is/ the right place. Debian-legal is the > place to discuss whether a license is free or not based on Debian's > ideas of freeness, not whether Debian's ideas of freeness are correct. > There may not be a more appropriate place at present. That doesn't make > the use of debian-legal appropriate.
Do you actually have any authority to make that proclamation, or is it just as much wishful thinking as my statement that this is an appropriate place? > You believe that there are some languages that are inherently > non-free? No, I believe some sourceless programs are inherently non-free. If they're not practically modifiable, then they can't be free software. > I'm still waiting to hear an example of something that patch clauses > actually make impossible. Well, let's say I have a program written in some interpreted language. Now I can't distribute it in usable form. Also, I can't combine two programs which each specify that their source must be distributed pristinely, using only patches and diffs to indicate modifications. I could ship the two pristine source files, but now I need to specify my program as some combinator function. That's not practical. The only thing I can practically do with such code is make modifications that fit within its originally intended general purpose. I certainly can't excerpt an interesting algorithm implementation and use it elsewhere. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
