Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 08:51:52PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: >> Matthew Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >> > Brian Thomas Sniffen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> Matthew Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >> >> >>> I find badly written perl approximately as hard to deal with as >> >>> brainfuck. Do you believe that poor quality perl is non-free, or is the >> >>> motive of the author important? >> >> >> >> I think it really depends on situation and context, and it is unlikely >> >> that accidental obfuscation -- like badly written Perl -- will or >> >> should ever keep something out of Debian. >> > >> > So freedom is more based on motivation than practicalities? >> >> Only you have spoken about motivation. I said that it depends on >> situation and context, and that this issue is unlikely to ever matter >> in practice. To be specific, I don't think anybody's ever going to >> point at badly written Perl and claim it's non-free, or point at >> intentionally obfuscated code in any language and claim it's free. >> >> There's a related issue that we see all the time (about once a year, >> I'd guess), regarding whether "preferred form for modification" takes >> non-existence into account. The general, but weak, consensus seems to > > But for some type of code, and hex editor is the preferred form of > modification. That is hardly none. and the class of code covered, altough > small, is not empty. I imagine that hand written machine language forreally > old computers of the pre-compiler days, or some small chips, as well as things > like boot sectors or various prom thingies enter in that category.
Well, yes -- sometimes, like for some firmware, raw machine code *is* the preferred form for modification. > Or if you look at code written by a low-level fanatic, who believe machine > code is the only right tru way. It is not non-free because of that, but > naturally you are free to do a C or whatever reimplementation. As I said, context and situation matter. I do not think Matthew Garrett's attempts to create a decidable rule will succeed. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]