> No use providing a music in .opus or .ogg format because, although these are indeed free/libre software friendly, > they're not the complete corresponding source files in most cases.
I'm not a lawyer, but to my understanding, version 3 of the GPL is worded in such a way that if nothing better than an audio file exists, it is sufficient as "corresponding source code". I read it this way because the license talks about the preferred form, not necessarily the ideal form.
Also, interpreting it in such a way that an audio file is unacceptable because it's more difficult to edit than e.g. an LMMS file reduces to absurdity in so many ways that the policy would be impractical. These are just a few examples I can think of:
- It would imply that any video which has been edited in Pitivi must therefore have its project file included as its source code, for example, even though it will only work with the exact file configuration the original author.
- In cases where a less easy to edit form is edited, the original "source code" (e.g. LMMS file) doesn't apply to the edited version. It only exists as an audio file. So is such an edit unacceptable, then?
- You can make a recording of anything, so does this policy mean that a sound recording is unacceptable, or can you work around the policy by recording a sound file that otherwise require source code through an analog audio stream, which only serves to degrade the quality?
So I take a more lax approach: include the best form available, but if there's nothing better than an audio file, that's fine. I do think, however, that it's a good idea to make sure that a lossless form of any audio file like this which is distributed in a lossy form (e.g. Ogg Vorbis) exists somewhere losslessly (e.g. FLAC) as well. Also, when I make changes, I try to record exactly what I did so that it can be repeated easily by others.
