Use the Source Luke

[rusi]

On Jan 29, 4:10 am, Ben Finney <ben+pyt... at benfinney.id.au> wrote:

> Note that Raymond is speaking specifically in the context of free
> software, where the license is by definition permitting free
> redistribution of the source code.

It is an obvious necessary condition that for code to be opened it
should be open (source).
However the necessary condition is not sufficient.

>
> I have a quibble with the framing:
>
> > The rest of the blame lies with installers. They all treat
> > human-readable scripts like they were binaries and tuck the code away
> > in a dark corner.

Consider this example:
The emacs source if compiled from source will give you help for each
lisp or even builtin (C) function out of the box from inside emacs.
However if you get the emacs package from debian/ubuntu you will get
neither unless you install el files -- which is fine -- just install
the el package.  About the C sources?  I dont believe that one can get
that linkage from within apt; one just hast to compile oneself.  (I
would be happy to be surprised on this).

Isn't this an instance of the problem that Raymond is talking of?

[Personal note:  Ive been a python user and teacher for nearly 10
years and would eagerly welcome more easy code-open-ness]