Non-functional/non-practical data/works (was: Re: RMS is back on board)

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

Em 25/03/2021 18:01, Ali Reza Hayati escreveu:
> …

Ali, I'm not replying to you, but to Dennis Payne. Their message is the only 
instance in which their statements appear.

> On March 25, 2021 8:39:16 PM UTC, Dennis Payne <dulsi@identicalsoftware.com> 
> wrote:
>> Even without those stories, I find RMS flawed in his treatment of
>> games. He is accepting of non-free artwork and other content as long as
>> it is not code. I understand his reasoning that is the artistic vision
>> of the creator. I just don't agree. If you want to add a new feature to
>> the game which requires some new sprites, you would be required to redo
>> all the content or perhaps make the new sprites clash in style so as to
>> not infringe on the copyright of the original art. Even something as
>> simple as tweaking a pause screen to add some information may require
>> altering some graphics. A free game with non-free content effectively
>> makes it non-free because some changes cannot be reasonably made.

For packages that want to be included in free/libre system distributions, 
according to the GNU FSDG, which is the guidelines used to review if a package 
can be included, or if a distro can be considered free/libre, the section on 
non-practical/non-functional works/data[1] states that at least freedom 2 in 
full must be granted (that is, the freedom to share and sell unlimited copies 
of the original work).

Interestingly, the Free Software Directory's requirements page[2] acknowledges 
that RMS also recognized that some subjectivity is needed, so they do leave 
margin for analysis of what can be considered a non-functional/non-practical 
data/work, since an audio file can either be used for listening pleasure or for 
an audio-based map generator for a game.

There is also a part of the free/libre software movement that cares for 
free/libre culture[3], which extends all the definitions to the 
non-functional/non-practical data/works. But from my past years implementing 
this to my works I can say that this is still challenging, as many people 
aren't aware that simply proving an .OGG/.OPUS file of a music is not enough 
(again, in the context of *free culture* activists, not free software 
activists), even if the license gives the four freedoms.

Furthermore, the resources that would be required for one free culture activist 
alone to provide the complete corresponding source files amount to tebibytes of 
data unless you find a caring community to share the load with you by seeding 
using torrents. Even with this, the seeded data mustn't be mutable/changeable, 
so either you stick with one intro for the 1,000 videos of your channel or make 
shares for each revision of the intro. On top of that, unless your torrent 
share did distribute the complete corresponding source files of the awesome 
video that is also on the same share, you would still have licensing 
considerations to take into account before simply deleting the old 
versions/revisions.

I don't know if WebTorrent/WebSeed/WebRTC supports seeding more than one file 
in the same torrent, and also has a way to tell which is the one that is 
supposed to be automatically played, but I hope it does provide such functions.

Before PeerTube existed (and I don't even know if it's free/libre yet, despite 
the FSD entry, since I don't know if all the direct or indirect dependencies 
were reviewed), I tried publishing videos and pointing in the video's 
description to the torrent of the complete corresponding source files, which I 
seeded for about two years, then I faced some storage issues and lost all stuff 
except the torrent files. I tried using those to recover the source files, but 
no seed appeared, this is why the above two paragraphs are so important for 
free culture activism.


# References


[1]: 
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html#non-functional-data
 .

[2]: 
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Free_Software_Directory:Requirements#Edge_Cases .

[3]: https://freedomdefined.org/Definition .


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