Fwd: [Foundation-l] File format policy
Alex Hudson
home at alexhudson.com
Sun Jan 20 10:13:41 UTC 2008
On Sun, 2008-01-20 at 11:41 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> If you truly want the policy to be robust, it's important to avoid the
> fallacy that programs can be discretely separated from other
> interpretations of digital information.
That's not a fallacy, it's a difference of opinion.
It's perfectly possible to talk about digital works in terms of what
their function is, what freedoms you might need for those functions, and
whether or not a work is free for a certain function.
Without the function it's pretty meaningless. You can't point at a
random binary, without knowing its function but knowing its license, and
call it either "free" or "not free".
Cheers,
Alex.
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