Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 10:20:29 -0400 From: Christopher Masto <chris@netmonger.net> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Producing non-GPLed tools for FreeBSD Message-ID: <19981020102029.A14879@netmonger.net> In-Reply-To: <4.1.19981019130712.065ac610@mail.lariat.org>; from Brett Glass on Mon, Oct 19, 1998 at 01:09:54PM -0600 References: <Your <4.1.19981019100241.0677ace0@mail.lariat.org> <199810191900.MAA00611@dingo.cdrom.com> <4.1.19981019130712.065ac610@mail.lariat.org>
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On Mon, Oct 19, 1998 at 01:09:54PM -0600, Brett Glass wrote: > At 12:00 PM 10/19/98 -0700, Mike Smith wrote: > > >libbfd is the binary file descriptor library; it contains primitives > >for reading and writing the various file formats that binutils > >supports. as, ld and ar all use it for manipulating their files. > > Hmm. I could write some code that used it to generate samples, then > emulate what it did. Awkward, though. And a shame that I'd have > to reinvent the wheel. That's what open source software is supposed > to avoid! Ah, but to those who believe in the RMS-style free software philosophy, the goal is to have free software, not to be able to borrow free code for use in proprietary programs. Whether you believe that way or not, I think this is a demonstration that the GPL at least partly achieves that goal. If your intention were to write free software, you would be able to use the work of those who wrote GNU binutils. They made those programs, and they have a right to establish the conditions under you can use and distribute them, and those conditions require that they remain free. I am not trying to advocate a particular view here, I just don't like to see GNU-bashing from the BSD people and BSD-bashing from the Linux people. It would be worthwile to understand each other, if not to respect each other. In the end, it's unfortunate that the licensing systems are incompatable. A compiler is a large project, and putting tons of effort into a new one just to attain the purity of not distributing GCC seems almost as silly as putting a disk platter on your head and blessing people's computers. -- Christopher Masto Director of Operations S NetMonger Communications chris@netmonger.net info@netmonger.net SSS http://www.netmonger.net \_/ [...] Microsoft has taken a perfectly good standard, broken it, and then told us that we have to buy expensive programs that support the broken interface rather than use the free ones that come with all operating systems in the world except Microsoft operating systems. - ALLEN HOLUB, Programmer and Columnist To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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