On 2004-09-22 15:01:14 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Kevin Spicer said: > > On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 14:25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > >> The database is not a script. It is a binary compilation. > > > > It's not a script, true, but it also is not a binary compilation. If > > you look inside any of the database files unpacked by sigtool (sigtool > > --unpack) you'll note that they are actually a plain text files, one > > line per entry. So I think the previous posters point about them being > > analagous to scripts in that they are their own source is valid. > > > > Zip files are compressed/packed too. Would you consider them source? Or > a container.
A container. Or a reversible transformation of the source code. Doesn't
matter much.
> I was using the term binary as in machine readable. And compilation as
> defined by Merriam-Webster: 'to collect and edit into a volume'
>
> Perhaps not the best choice of wording, but very apparent to me when I
> wrote it.
>
> Source is generally accepted as human readable. A 'cat daily.cvd' yields
> something other than human readable.
The GPL defines "source" as "the preferred form of the work for making
modifications to it". If the maintainers of the clamav db add new
signatures by unpacking the database, modifying it and packing it again,
it is source code (the act of packing and unpacking is IMHO similar to
tarring and untarring C source files). If they the generate the database
from a different source, which cannot be trivially reconstructed from
the distributed database, it is not source code. In the latter case, the
database cannot be covered by the GPL (you cannot require somebody to
distribute the source if you don't give it to them).
hp
--
_ | Peter J. Holzer | Je höher der Norden, desto weniger wird
|_|_) | Sysadmin WSR | überhaupt gesprochen, also auch kein Dialekt.
| | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Hallig Gröde ist fast gänzlich dialektfrei.
__/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Hannes Petersen in desd
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