[pp.int.general] Richard Stallman's interview

[Wybo Wiersma]

> We discussed RMS' desire at length and found it had two basic flaws:
> 
> 1) Creating an arbitrary division between software and non-software is
> no longer possible or realistic in the age of electronic music. Remember
> that RMS has a software-only perspective on copyright; ours needs to be
> a culture-and-knowledge perspective.

Indeed, I would say that much non-software would also be nice to come
with sources... (vector-images, animation-moviews, maps, etc...)

And on these issues the division is not arbitrary: Stuff that needs
sources to be able to remix it, and stuff that doesn't...

(and remixing as in creating a read-write-web is quite central to our
standpoints...)

> 2) Creating an arbitrary division between source code and non-source
> code is no longer possible, especially in the age of .Net and Java where
> you can regenerate the original source on the fly from binaries. If you
> were to require companies to submit source code in a certain language,
> when they did not WANT to do so, you would get the most obfuscated
> horror imaginable that would be way worse than a first-stage automated
> decompile of the binary, but still fulfills the technical demand of
> being in that certain language and compiling to that exact binary.

One could require that it 'd be the same sourcecode that they use
internally. Or require some standards, etc.. There are many ways to
make sure that the code is usable...

(As a comparison: restaurants can refuse entry to health-inspectors
but that doesn't make it nonsense to require standards for them)

And about the .Net and Java-stuff, sure, one can regenerate source for
them, but still, and probably for a long time to come, much very crucial
code is written in fast languages like C. So this misses the point.

> The only thing RMS' proposal would accomplish is a taxpayer-funded
> repository of illegible, obfuscated good-for-nothing code and a payroll
> to administer it.

Don't agree. RMS' proposal is quite sensible.

Wybo

> Rick