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From: gt8134b@prism.gatech.EDU (Howlin' Bob)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: 386BSD/NetBSD FPU emulator ?
Message-ID: <109524@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Date: 19 Aug 93 22:24:37 GMT
References: <24vc8k$ltr@itu1.sun.ac.za> <250bgn$r96@pdq.coe.montana.edu>
Sender: news@prism.gatech.EDU
Lines: 51
osyjm@cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen) writes:
>In article <24vc8k$ltr@itu1.sun.ac.za>,
>Andre Skarzynski <abs@cs.sun.ac.za> wrote:
>>Hi,
>>
>>I used to hack 386BSD, but have been away from it for some months now.
>>I remember that the Floating Point Unit emulator did not work very well. It
>>used to give incorrect answers. For example, if I run the following code:
>>My question: Has this been fixed? Or is everyone using 486DX's ?
>As I recall, the *bsd groups have received permission from the guy that
>wrote the Linux math emulator (which is apparently better than the
>*bsd ones) to include it in *bsd.
Uh, if I remember correctly, the math emulator in *BSD now is an early
version of Linux's first math emulator, written by Linus himself.
Linus agreed to "release" the emulator to the 386BSD group and
to remove the GPL from it.
This has since been replaced by Bill Metzenthan's math emulator, offering
much improved performance and accuracy (no offense, Linus!). It looks
like a fairly good piece of software; they even went so far as to
reverse engineering some undocumented opcodes for it.
Both are under the GPL. You don't have to ask permission to use them,
unless you have some other political agenda and wish to de-license
the code. Frankly, I'm not comfortable with people saying "We don't
like your choice of license, so could you give us your code *and*
remove the GPL?" Just like with any other software, you should respect
the author's wishes and abide by the license. I don't go around asking
BSD authors if I can rip their copyright notices out of ther software.
I'm not trying to revive the dreaded MIT/BSD copyright vs. GPL flame war,
so please don't start arguing the relative merits of them. I don't
much care which you use; what's important is that I will respect it.
If the BSD groups are using so much GPL'ed software (and they are), then
perhaps they should get off their high horse and let the damn thing be.
It's obviously not doing them any harm.
--
Robert Sanders
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
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--
Robert Sanders
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!gt8134b
Internet: gt8134b@prism.gatech.edu