*BSD News Article 45075


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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