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Debian Weekly News 2004/15Debian Weekly News 2004/15Posted Apr 14, 2004 5:32 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957)In reply to: Debian Weekly News 2004/15 by jwb Parent article: Debian Weekly News 2004/15 Easy -- those 4 bytes can (and are) written easily by hand, i.e. they are the preferred form of modification. For the purposes of the GPL and the DFSG, that makes them the source. People (most people, especially those working on commercial hardware) don't write 4k binary blobs by hand anyone, everyone uses an assembler. The assembly code is the source. The issue is much less about GPL-compatibility (in most cases), than about compliance with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Debian doesn't want to distribute non-free software, regardless of where that software is executed.
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Debian Weekly News 2004/15 Posted Apr 14, 2004 15:03 UTC (Wed) by jwb (subscriber, #15467) [Link] Okay, I can see your point. But what about other cases of objects that are not distributed with source? Take an image for example. If the artist creates the image using the Gimp, but Debian distributes the PNG, does that mean that either 1) Debian must also distribute the XCF file, because that's the preferred form for modification, or 2) Debian must move all artwork to non-free?Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have the commented source for all these firmware blobs. Some firmware source for the aic7xxx/79xx SCSI HBA for example is included in the kernel by Adaptec themselves. And short of that I think loading the firmware from userspace is the best idea. But either way I think the project is blowing this issue out of proportion and it will hurt the users eventually.
Debian Weekly News 2004/15 Posted Apr 14, 2004 19:44 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] The answer is, Debian must distribute the XCF, if such a form existed. Sometimes the author of the work doesn't even save an intermediate form (for example, you don't distribute your source code with undo information in it), in which case, that's probably the preferred form for modification. If the author has an XCF that she modifies and then only gives users the PNG, then that image is proprietary, because you don't have source access. But if the author uses a PNG herself as the main form of modification, then it's the source.In most cases, Debian does distribute the source to non-code, like XCF for image files, if such things exist. If you run across a situation where Debian doesn't, please file a bug against the package.
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