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Debian/OW ... FASM (Announce)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 11.09.2010, 23:44

> I don't know about binary blobs, but the
> Debian
> Free Software Guidelines say this, which might be the reason they
> want free compilers:
>
> DFSG> To be free, software must be modifiable by [anyone, and they] must
> DFSG> also be able to legally share modifications [...]
>
> This probably means they want their users able to recompile everything,
> only using the (free) compilers that are included in the distribution.
Sure, that's the reason, but it's bogus. They don't want to rebuild FreeDOS, they don't care and never have. They also couldn't care about DOSEMU either. So why pretend? Sure, OW has a weirdo license, but nobody is going to update it any time soon. If the OW hackers (who've spent years on the thing) don't care about worrying over their own work, why should I? Bah, such a mess, even if OSI approved (heh). The real problem is that nothing else (more free) can build FreeDOS, so beggars can't be choosers.

P.S. I personally think FASM is plenty free. Sure, you can't GPL it, but you couldn't realistically do that anyways with other licenses (except as a whole, which really only affects your own changes). Besides, nobody needs or wants to do so with FASM, and it's already been used commercially in many places, so it's "moot". I guess it's more of a "don't pretend you wrote it" clause than anything, so people can not be confused by different licensed derivatives. (And Japheth is right, it lacks OMF, but so does DJGPP. Besides, there are already tons of existing tools that handle that, so adding it to FASM wouldn't hurt but isn't a priority.)

---
Know your limits.h

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