Ben Finney <[email protected]> writes: > Not all interpreters are interpreting executable programs as input. > Your “ASCII interpreter” is not treating the input document as a > program. It is parsing the document's structure and content, but not > executing the result as a program. A plain-text email message is data, > and is a document, but is not a program. > > This is distinct from a PDF renderer, which takes the input document > and parses its structure and content, but then must go further and > execute the result as a program in order to render to output. A PDF > data stream is data, and is a document, but [is a program].
The point above was marred by my typo, negating a phrase. Fixed now. > Your argument attempts to erase the distinction between program and > non-program. I don't accept that; “program” has a useful definition, > and some data streams are not normally programs while others are. So my point is not that these distinctions don't exist; clearly there are categories of the purpose to which a work is put, and those categories include programs, audio streams, graphic images, videos, text documents, markup documents, databases, etc. Rather, my point is that these categories are not exclusive. Works commonly inhabit several of these categories simultaneously, and it's clearly false to say that no document is a program, or vice versa. From that it follows that it's unjust to deny the freedoms that accrue for functional use of a work, merely because the copyright holder doesn't think it has functional use. But even if the categories were exclusive, so what? Yes, there are some works which are clearly not programs *now*. Why deny a recipient the freedom to derive a program from a non-program? On what basis should the copyright holder wield their power to declare that such-and-such work can never have a functional purpose in any derived form, and thus no recipient deserves the freedoms accruing to functional purposes? With or withough exclusive purpose-based categories, it is unjust to deny the software freedoms to any recipient of any software work merely on the basis of how the copyright holder thinks the work should be used. -- \ “For myself, I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use | `\ being anything else.” —Winston Churchill, 1954-11-09 | _o__) | Ben Finney _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list [email protected] http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb Free Software Melbourne home page: http://www.freesoftware.asn.au/melb/
