On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 02:14:38AM +0200, Guillem Jover wrote: > On Wed, 2019-07-24 at 00:49:24 +0200, Adam Borowski wrote: > > ################## > > I do not consider a flat tarball to be a preferred form for modification. > > Thus, like any non-source form, it must be accompanied by a way to obtain > > the actual form for modification. There are many such ways -- unless you > > distribute the software in highly unusual circumstances, a link to a > > network server suffices; see the text of the GPL for further details. > > ##################
> > * comments giving rationale for a change tend to be written as VCS commit > > messages > This concept keeps being put forward from time to time, and it keeps > making little sense to me. The "preferred form of the work for making > modifications to it" is the actual source files, that's the work. A > tarball is a way to *transport* and *disseminate* those files, it's > not the work, and people do not edit the tarball. A VCS can be used > to *record* those modifications, or to *transport* and *disseminate* > them, in the same way you could do with a series of patches. But > "modifying" the VCS is a by-product of having modified the actual > source. By this logic, a pile of .c files with comments removed or preprocessed with cpp would be allowed as well. The VCS is also a means to store human-readable comments. Another piece of [meta]data that a flat tarball lacks is authorship information. Meow! -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢰⠒⠀⣿⡁ ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ At least spammers get it right: "Hello beautiful!". ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀