> it's extremely questionable to try to interpret > "preferred form for modification" as "preferred form for modification, > or any form, no matter how unreasonable it is to edit, if the preferred > form for modification has been lost".
The "preferred form for modification" is not the "form we'd like to edit". I've got an Algol68 compiler written in Fortran 66 and JCL, which is not my preferred form for modification, but I don't think anyone would argue that I don't have the source code, even though there theoretically exists a semantically identical compiler written in Ada and Make. Even though there exists in theory a semantically identical assembler or C source file, if only the binary exists in reality, that is the preferred form of modification. In some cases of ROMs, like those for early gaming systems, that form is frequently modified. Perhaps there exists a line between 10K of binary and 10M of binary where it goes from "the preferred form of modification" to unmodifiable (in a practical sense), but there are many cases of source code in assembler or C where the source code is unmodifiable (in a practical sense). -- __________________________________________________________ Sign-up for your own personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup CareerBuilder.com has over 400,000 jobs. Be smarter about your job search http://corp.mail.com/careers
