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Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Talking about non-free software on the list


From: Chris Warburton
Subject: Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Talking about non-free software on the list
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:14:37 +0000
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.2 (gnu/linux)

Bob Ham <address@hidden> writes:
> On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 19:12 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
>> Quiliro Ordóñez wrote:
>> > By the way of your reasoning, would it be OK to explain how to edit the
>> > registry of Microsoft Windows on Debian as long as it was installed in a
>> > VirtualBox instance?
>
>> why not, if it's necessary to get/change something
>> there to make Debian work?
>
> Suppose there are two pieces of software, A and B.  If A depends on B
> and B is non-free then A is not free.

I completely disagree. If I have the 4 Freedoms, it's Free Software.

Software "B" is not part of "A", so any terms it imposes will only apply
to those users who use "A" and "B" together. To make this less abstract,
let's say that "A" is a game written against a display library "B".

The Free Software Definition on gnu.org states of Freedom 0:

"In this freedom, it is the user's purpose that matters, not the
developer's purpose"

It doesn't matter if the developers of "A" intended it to be compiled
against "B" and played; only my purpose, as a user, matter.

My purpose may be to test my own Free Software replacement for "B". My
purpose may be to run the AI code from "A" without ever displaying any
graphics. My purpose may be to learn the algorithms "A" implements.

As a real-world example, I've learned algorithms from MATLAB code
without ever having used MATLAB.

The GPL3 defines "Corresponding Source" to include "the source code for
shared libraries and dynamically linked subprograms that the work is
specifically designed to require". However, this is specific to the GPL
and is not part of the Free Software Definition, in the same way that
copyleft, "Liberty or Death" and "anti-Tivoisation" aren't.

As an analogy, Freedom 0 still holds for the "A" despite the various UK
computer misuse laws that restrict what I am allowed to do with
it. Again, these are external, not imposed by "A" itself.

Chris



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