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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!agis!vtc.tacom.army.mil!news1.oakland.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gatech!news.mathworks.com!solaris.cc.vt.edu!usenet From: mmead@hq.ctr.vt.edu (matthew c. mead) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Berkeley Free CC? (Was: Re: Slight flame from Linux user) Date: 06 Jun 1995 19:52:30 GMT Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia Lines: 43 Message-ID: <MMEAD.95Jun6155230@hq.ctr.vt.edu> References: <3ql3gd$je2@bell.maths.tcd.ie> <D9K4Iz.BJM@midway.uchicago.edu> <MMEAD.95Jun4013608@Glock.COM> <3qvojd$n14@park.uvsc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: hq.ctr.vt.edu NNTP-Posting-User: mmead In-reply-to: Terry Lambert's message of 5 Jun 1995 20:14:37 GMT In article <3qvojd$n14@park.uvsc.edu> Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu> writes: > mmead@Glock.COM (matthew c. mead) wrote: > ] You're probably going to have to. In a lot of people's opinion, > ] the GPL is ass backwards about what you can and cannot do with someone > ] else's "freely available" code. I'm not saying we're right; I'm just > ] saying that's our opinion. The GPL endorsers can bloody well have their > ] own opinion, but the fact that those of us don't believe in the GPL's > ] philosophies may mean that FreeBSD won't have GPL'd code for a function > ] which Berkeley licensed code performs just as adequately. > Get the file system and drivers released under LGPL and they can > be loaded as kernel modules without removing the patch/source > distribution requirements AND without causing the rest of the > code to become "contaminated". Unlike shared libraries, which > have GPL'ed code stubs and GPL'ed data declarations statically > linked into the resulting binary, a kernel module load is a complete > relink, so unlike shared libs, it complies with LGPL. True, I didn't think of that. That would certainly keep the BSD code from being "contaminated." > ] GCC is a different story since there is (to my knowledge) no free > ] Berkeley licensed compiler. > There is. It's just not hosted on as many platforms. There some Oooh... kewl. Where could one running FreeBSD get a port of it? Or is there a port? If not, is anyone working on one, or could I do it? I'd like to try it out... > indication that it produces tighter code (at least that's been > reported to be the case) than GCC. Why doesn't that surprise me at all? :-) -matt -- Matthew C. Mead | Network Administration: Virginia Tech Center for | Transportation Research -> mmead@ctr.vt.edu mmead@Glock.COM | Network Administration and Software Development http://www.Glock.COM/~mmead/ | Consulting: BizNet Technologies -> mmead@bnt.com