Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[Thomas Bushnell, BSG]

John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> What does the GPL definition have to do with Debian? 

Perhaps you were unaware of it.  Many Debian packages contain GPL'd
elements.

Thomas

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[Glenn Maynard]

On Sun, Mar 17, 2002 at 10:59:27PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> I submit since postscript is turing complete, postscript documents are 
> actually already in source form.

"A Turing-complete system is one in which the behaviour of a universal
Turing machine can be completely emulated."

Er.  That would include compiled binaries, and they're not source; what
does turing completeness have to do with whether a file is source or not?

I think that a PDF is source if it's human-editable, and not if it's
practically uneditable PDF code generated from something else.  The
GFDL tries to make this distinction for HTML.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[John Galt]

I am fully aware of the fact that Debian contains GPL'd stuff.  But what 
does a GPL definition of source have to do with a DFSG 2 determination?  


On 17 Mar 2002, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:

>John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> What does the GPL definition have to do with Debian? 
>
>Perhaps you were unaware of it.  Many Debian packages contain GPL'd
>elements.
>
>Thomas
>

-- 
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Who is John Galt?  [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who!  

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[Thomas Bushnell, BSG]

John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> I am fully aware of the fact that Debian contains GPL'd stuff.  But what 
> does a GPL definition of source have to do with a DFSG 2 determination?  

The context was not asking that question.

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[Thomas Bushnell, BSG]

John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> I submit since postscript is turing complete, postscript documents are 
> actually already in source form.

If the GPL is in question, it gives a specific definition of "source"
under which most postscript documents are not in source form.

Thomas

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[John Galt]

On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Glenn Maynard wrote:

>On Sun, Mar 17, 2002 at 10:59:27PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
>> I submit since postscript is turing complete, postscript documents are 
>> actually already in source form.
>
>"A Turing-complete system is one in which the behaviour of a universal
>Turing machine can be completely emulated."
>
>Er.  That would include compiled binaries, and they're not source; what
>does turing completeness have to do with whether a file is source or not?

Okay, provide a definition of source that includes interpretive languages 
such as Perl.  I submit that any definition of source so broad as to 
include a perlscript must necessarily include a postscript document.

>I think that a PDF is source if it's human-editable, and not if it's
>practically uneditable PDF code generated from something else.  The
>GFDL tries to make this distinction for HTML.

...and fails miserably IMHO.  One thing that must necessarily fall into 
the "not source" category is ASCII-armored encrypted text, yet the GFDL 
allows it as a transparent copy, for an example.  GPG is available to the 
general public, it is editable with cat or sed with the proper key if you 
so desire, and the output from gpg is pipeable.  

-- 
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Who is John Galt?  [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who!  

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[John Galt]

On 17 Mar 2002, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:

>John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> I am fully aware of the fact that Debian contains GPL'd stuff.  But what 
>> does a GPL definition of source have to do with a DFSG 2 determination?  
>
>The context was not asking that question.

No, in context, the GPL never even came in to the discussion until Sam 
Hartman used it's definition.  The context was about the DFSG-freeness of 
integral documentation, like the RFCs included in bind-doc. I've already 
treated on the "source-ness" of a postscript document in an agnostic 
fashion other places in this discussion, and I'll not reiterate it here.  
Needless to say, CM Connelly's question is on the applicability of DFSG 2 
on documents.  Saying that the context is other than this is disingenuous 
at best, fallacious at worst.

-- 
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Who is John Galt?  [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who!  

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[Thomas Bushnell, BSG]

John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Okay, provide a definition of source that includes interpretive languages 
> such as Perl.  I submit that any definition of source so broad as to 
> include a perlscript must necessarily include a postscript document.

I think we can just use the same one as the GPL, which seems pretty
clear and usable: whatever form is most preferred for making changes.

That's really quite good enough, and should satisfy everyone except
the occasional troll.

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[Glenn Maynard]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 12:15:41AM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> Okay, provide a definition of source that includes interpretive languages 
> such as Perl.  I submit that any definition of source so broad as to 
> include a perlscript must necessarily include a postscript document.

The form of a {program,document} that is intended for modification.  This
includes perl scripts (unless they've been run through an obfuscator),
human-editable HTML, and human-editable PDF.  It clearly doesn't include
most generated PDF.

I recall Roxen coming with a Tetris module, called GPL (I believe), with 
obfuscated source.  Gah.

There's also the case where there's no human-editable forms; ie, a document
created in Word, saved as DOC and exported to HTML.  Now there's no source at
all.

> >I think that a PDF is source if it's human-editable, and not if it's
> >practically uneditable PDF code generated from something else.  The
> >GFDL tries to make this distinction for HTML.
> 
> ...and fails miserably IMHO.  One thing that must necessarily fall into 
> the "not source" category is ASCII-armored encrypted text, yet the GFDL 
> allows it as a transparent copy, for an example.  GPG is available to the 
> general public, it is editable with cat or sed with the proper key if you 
> so desire, and the output from gpg is pipeable.  

How does it fail miserably?  It's obviously extremely poor in the
general case, but it seems pretty close (if imperfect) for HTML:

"Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include ...
standard-conforming simple HTML designed for human modification.
Opaque formats include ... the machine-generated HTML produced by some
word processors for output purposes only."

Other than "simple" (complicated, hand-written HTML isn't transparent?)
and "standards-conforming" (if I release HTML that uses the  tag,
it's not human-editable?), this seems reasonable.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[John Galt]

On 17 Mar 2002, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:

>John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> Okay, provide a definition of source that includes interpretive languages 
>> such as Perl.  I submit that any definition of source so broad as to 
>> include a perlscript must necessarily include a postscript document.
>
>I think we can just use the same one as the GPL, which seems pretty
>clear and usable: whatever form is most preferred for making changes.

What precisely is the form most preferred for making changes in RFCs?  
What precisely is the form most preferred for making changes in the GPL?

>That's really quite good enough, and should satisfy everyone except
>the occasional troll.

Given your historical definition of troll, that pretty much means that you 
exempt most of humanity from your reasonableness qualification...  "That's 
really quite good enough, and should satisfy everyone except most of 
humanity" just doesn't work.

-- 
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Who is John Galt?  [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who!  

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[John Galt]

At least in the case of bind, the GPL is not part of the question.  Look 
at the license for bind...

On 17 Mar 2002, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:

>John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> I submit since postscript is turing complete, postscript documents are 
>> actually already in source form.
>
>If the GPL is in question, it gives a specific definition of "source"
>under which most postscript documents are not in source form.
>
>Thomas
>
>
>

-- 
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Who is John Galt?  [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who!  

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[John Galt]

On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Glenn Maynard wrote:

>On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 12:15:41AM -0700, John Galt wrote:
>> Okay, provide a definition of source that includes interpretive languages 
>> such as Perl.  I submit that any definition of source so broad as to 
>> include a perlscript must necessarily include a postscript document.
>
>The form of a {program,document} that is intended for modification.  This
>includes perl scripts (unless they've been run through an obfuscator),
>human-editable HTML, and human-editable PDF.  It clearly doesn't include
>most generated PDF.

So the Free Software Manifesto doesn't have any source at all, since it's 
an invariant, and therefore not intended for modification?  I'm going to 
go ahead and open a can of worms here and ask if Pine has a source, since 
it is clearly not intended for modification other than by UW.  Do DJB 
programs have a source: they're also clearly not intended for 
modification.

>I recall Roxen coming with a Tetris module, called GPL (I believe), with 
>obfuscated source.  Gah.
>
>There's also the case where there's no human-editable forms; ie, a document
>created in Word, saved as DOC and exported to HTML.  Now there's no source at
>all.

Isn't a Word doc clearly intended for modification, with Word?



-- 
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Who is John Galt?  [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who!  

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[Glenn Maynard]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 01:14:50AM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> >The form of a {program,document} that is intended for modification.  This
> >includes perl scripts (unless they've been run through an obfuscator),
> >human-editable HTML, and human-editable PDF.  It clearly doesn't include
> >most generated PDF.
> 
> So the Free Software Manifesto doesn't have any source at all, since it's 
> an invariant, and therefore not intended for modification?  I'm going to 
> go ahead and open a can of worms here and ask if Pine has a source, since 
> it is clearly not intended for modification other than by UW.  Do DJB 
> programs have a source: they're also clearly not intended for 
> modification.

The form of the FSM, the Pine source and so on are ones that are intended to
be modifiable.  That doesn't mean other factors (copyrights) don't make it
illegal.

I also didn't claim that this was a comprehensive definition, and didn't
intend it to be; it was just a reasonable one that fit what you asked for.
(A comprehensive definition of "source" is hard to come by.  Feel free to
try to supply one ...)

> >There's also the case where there's no human-editable forms; ie, a document
> >created in Word, saved as DOC and exported to HTML.  Now there's no source at
> >all.
> 
> Isn't a Word doc clearly intended for modification, with Word?

And we're back at the fact that "source", like "software", is hard to define,
and sometimes it's even hard to tell intuitively.  (With respect to exported
HTML I suppose the original Word document is the source; but it hardly seems
correct to call it that.)

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Sun, Mar 17, 2002 at 10:24:36AM +, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote:
> I would also guess that in most cases the availability of source is
> irrelevant, because the academic paper isn't available under a
> DFSG-free licence anyway; most authors of academic papers don't want
> other people distributing modified versions of them. This isn't a
> serious restriction, because no one would want to do that anyway, but
> it means that academic papers are generally not DFSG-free.

I want to do it.

Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Marcus Brinkmann  GNUhttp://www.gnu.org[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de

Re: Preprints/Reprints of Academic Papers in Packages

[Sam Hartman]

> "John" == John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

John> On 17 Mar 2002, Sam Hartman wrote:
>>> "C" == C M Connelly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>
C> Many packages contain preprints or reprints of academic papers
C> as part of their documentation.  In many cases, there is no
C> ``source'' available for these documents -- they are
C> distributed as PostScript or PDF files.
>>  One case that seems fairly clear to me is cases where the
>> upstream doesn't have the source either.  If the upstream would
>> be stuck editing the ps or pdf if they wanted to modify the
>> document, then that document is its own source code at least
>> under the GPL definition.

John> What does the GPL definition have to do with Debian?



It seems a not unreasonable definition of source code to use.

[hugh@mimosa.com: RE: Bug#120759: jove doesn't seem to have an free license.]

[Cord Beermann]

Hi. 

would you comment on these two suggestions? are they ok for us?

thanks,
Cord

PS: please Cc me on replies.

- Forwarded message from "D. Hugh Redelmeier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -

X-Envelope-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 22:13:10 -0500 (EST)
From: "D. Hugh Redelmeier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Jonathan Payne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Cord Beermann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Bug#120759: jove doesn't seem to have an free license. 
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-5.1 required=5.0 
tests=IN_REP_TO,COPYRIGHT_CLAIMED,LINE_OF_YELLING version=2.11

I want to resolve this.

I'm annoyed at the length of the BSD and GNU licenses.

The current JOVE notice is:

/
 * This program is Copyright (C) 1986-1999 by Jonathan Payne.  JOVE is  *
 * provided to you without charge, and with no warranty.  You may give  *
 * away copies of JOVE, including sources, provided that this notice is *
 * included in all the files.   *
 /

How about this version instead, cut down from the Berkeley license,
as per Charles' suggestion:

  Copyright 1986-2002 Jonathan Payne.   All rights reserved.
  Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
  modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
  met:
 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided
with the distribution.
  THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE [EMAIL PROTECTED] ``AS IS''
  AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES ARE DISCLAIMED.

Or how about this one, a slightly beefed up version of our current
notice:

  This program is Copyright (C) 1986-2002 by Jonathan Payne.  JOVE is
  provided by Jonathan and Jovehacks without charge and without
  warranty.  You may copy, modify, and distribute JOVE, provided that
  this notice is included in all the source files and documentation.

Which do folks prefer?  Are you concerned of either of these?

Hugh Redelmeier
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  voice: +1 416 482-8253


- End forwarded message -

-- 
Cord Beermann   [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Privat)

Antwort die bei JEDER Gelegenheit passt: 'Auch das geht vorbei.'

Source, Opaqueness, Transparency

[Christopher Browne]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Glenn Maynard) wrote:
> And we're back at the fact that "source", like "software", is hard
> to define, and sometimes it's even hard to tell intuitively.  (With
> respect to exported HTML I suppose the original Word document is the
> source; but it hardly seems correct to call it that.)
X-Mailer: mh-e 6.0; nmh 1.0.4+dev; Emacs 21.4

... And that is why the wording of the FDL (at least first version)
gave a set of suggestive examples, and indicated that whether a
particular form should be considered "opaque" or "transparent"
couldn't be made into a direct formula.

Postscript and HTML are the most useful pathological cases:

-> Postscript is almost always an "opaque" form generated from some
   more "transparent" form.  

   But not always, because some people (look at
   ) use it
   as the native form for writing documents.  I'd be unsurprised if
   Don Lancaster wrote his own books in Postscript too.

-> HTML is more ambiguous.  I would think it would be generally
   considered "more transparent" than Postscript, as many more people
   know how to write up HTML tagging by hand, and there are a whopping
   lot of tools out there for interactively editing HTML documents.

   But if I wrote my docs in DocBook/SGML, and used Jade/DSSSL to
   transform that to HTML, then DocBook/SGML is the "transparent" form
   to be preferred for editing.

Those are both good examples to demonstrate that there's no pat legal
formula to use.

It's somewhat like pornography or obscenity; these things are not easy
to forcibly nail down in laws that can be put on the books, but "I'll
surely recognize it when I see it."

The notion of _wanting_ this to be set down in the FDL as
hard-and-fast legal language strikes me as being a mistake, because of
the inherent ambiguity.
-- 
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.gultn@" "enworbbc"))
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/sgml.html Rules of the Evil Overlord
#123. "If I decide to hold a contest of skill open to the general
public, contestants will be required to remove their hooded cloaks and
shave their beards before entering."  

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[Bdale Garbee]