On Wed, 2004-08-25 at 17:30 -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: > Matthew Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > 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?
The word "think" is significant here. > > 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. What if they are practically modifiable, but only by a small set of people? > > 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. Of course you can. Include a wrapper application that patches it at runtime. > 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. Write a small application that turns source code A into a diff that can be applied against source code B. > 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. Sure you can. It's wasteful in terms of the amount of storage space used, but it's entirely possible. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
