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Date:      Fri, 5 Oct 2007 21:46:07 +0100 (BST)
From:      Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>
To:        d@delphij.net
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Aryeh Friedman <aryeh.friedman@gmail.com>
Subject:   Re: viral license free fork of freebsd
Message-ID:  <20071005214506.X88717@fledge.watson.org>
In-Reply-To: <4705CA47.9090101@delphij.net>
References:  <bef9a7920710042203r33e4c23axf3629e1e6f30a042@mail.gmail.com> <4705CA47.9090101@delphij.net>

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On Thu, 4 Oct 2007, LI Xin wrote:

> Aryeh Friedman wrote:
>> I am intrested in putting together a version of FreeBSD (at least the 
>> non-ports portion) that is 100% viral license (gpl and lgpl [not 
>> techinically viral but I don't trust it]) free... where would be a good 
>> starting point on this project?
>
> Set MK_GNU = no, and MK_GNU_SUPPORT = no?
>
> Well, if you want a moderate amount of work you may want to try replacing 
> sort(1) with the old BSD one, and optimize it.  Also some *roff stuff, etc. 
> If you are really energyic then you will want to join a project like llvm or 
> so for a better compiler.
>
> My opinion is that, while licensing issue is important, but there are a lot 
> of other factors that must be taken into account.  If a new piece of 
> software has better code quality, better performance, etc., then it would be 
> a big bonus over "just with a license we liked" :-)  Optimizing libc/regex 
> might be a good start if you want to go this way.

It's not clear this is comprehensive, but it may still be useful in discussing 
replacing GPL'd components with non-GPL'd ones:

   http://wiki.freebsd.org/ContribSoftware

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge



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