[not entirely OT] proper terms for grades of freedom

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 04:17:07PM +0300, Nadav Har'El wrote:

> Because in reality, if you have access to the source code, you *can*
> change it. Even if the license somehow tries to force you not to, there
> is no way that the seller can enforce it on software running in-house.
> So if you let people see the source code, might as well just let them change
> it - there's no point in pretending they can't.

Even if you have the source code, it does not mean you can build it.

Say this is 2000. You got a hold of a secret copy of Oh-No.o Someone
called JBA gives you a secret patch that adds Hebrew support to that odd
software. Does this mean you can actually use it?

Sure. You can apply the patch. But now you need to actually build the
beast.

Luckily for us, in the real story, JBA was allowed to not only
redistribute modified sources, but also modified binaries, and thus many
more people were able to test the Hebrew support even beforeit got into
the OO.o tree.

-- 
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