[pp.int.general] Why Free Software misses the point

[Fedor Khod'kov]

Radosław Nadstawny <radoslaw.nadstawny at o2.pl> writes:
> I'd disagree. Terms like "human readable" and "machine readable" are
> inventions of lawyers and have little or no true meaning. Every program
> can be read and understood by human even in it's binary form. It just
> requires some skills. Sure, binary form is harder to comprehend than
> source code, but not impossible. Saying that computer program in binary
> form is not human readable is like saying that books in Chinese are not
> human readable, and because of this you can't compare them to books in
> English.

There are learning courses in Chinese; there are also translators who
can translate a book from Chinese to English or any other language;
probably, in the future software translators will be able to produce
adequate translations from Chinese automatically.  So, books in Chinese
are human-readable.

On the contrary, there are no learning courses on reading binary form of
software and no translators (either specially trained human or special
software) exist.  Reverse-engineering is not routine activity.  That
means software in binary form isn't human-readable.
-- 
Fedor.