Re: bounty for emulator

On Oct 27, 2011, at 10:42 AM, Groepaz <groepaz@gmx.net> wrote:

> On Thursday 27 October 2011, you wrote:
>> I love how we all suffer due to RMS's idiotic religion that for some reason
>> prevents free software from being distributed for free...  
> 
> if the istore would be free, this discussion would not exist

If the software was truly free, sharing would not be mandatory, and anyone who wanted could compile it and submit it on the store.  Forced sharing is at least as dictatorial.

>> I believe the
>> inability to share the DRM'd binary was the restriction in this case.  I
>> think there are potential workarounds for this, but it didn't come
>> together for VLC.
> 
> there is no real workaround. if you provide a binary, then you must provide 
> the sourcecode that enables anyone interested to compile that binary.

The source code was free and released.  The issue was that the binary you got from the store could not be given to someone else because of the DRM - they had to download it from the store, where it was free to download.  So this free software which was downloadable for free and for which source was free was not free enough for religious zealots, and every consumer suffered for it.

And there are probably ways around it, for example now that it is legal to jailbreak your device, you could include source with the store version and anyone who wanted could download it to the device they chose to jailbreak and compile it - if they choose not to jailbreak and compile so be it, but it would still comply with GPL 2 I think.  One might argue the DRM precludes it, but I would counter argue that I prefer the additional security that code signing imposes and that as such it is not DRM but a firewall I choose to run (by not jail breaking) to protect myself against unsigned code execution.  VICE uses GPL 2.
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