(nonfree) blobwars family of games

Ben Finney ben+freedesktop at benfinney.id.au
Sat Sep 27 03:10:31 PDT 2008


Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> writes:

> Ben Finney wrote:
> > Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl> writes:
> >> (in Fedora we do not demand that content licenses allow
> >> modification, an architect may not want to have the house he
> >> designed changed afterwards, a painter does not want his painting
> >> modified, etc.).
> > 
> > Those arguments are as valid for programs as for any other
> > software; i.e. not at all. A programmer, after all, "may not want
> > to have the program he wrote changed by the recipient afterwards".
> > That doesn't give any support to the idea that such a work belongs
> > in a free operating system.
> 
> FSF makes the distinction between software and "non functional
> data".

No matter who makes an argument, it should be criticised on its
merits. I merely pointed out the inherent fallacy in supposing that
one bitstream can be distinguished from another in terms of what
freedom the recipient deserves.

I'm not interested in opening a flame war, but I'm also not going to
let flawed arguments against software freedom go unchallenged.

-- 
 \                         “I doubt, therefore I might be.” —anonymous |
  `\                                                                   |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney



More information about the Distributions mailing list