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Debian/OW ... FASM (Announce)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 12.09.2010, 04:18

> > The real problem is that nothing else (more free) can build FreeDOS,
> > so beggars can't be choosers.
>
> It's Write-your-own-compiler day! If anyone cares enough about Debian.
Too hard to do, esp. since 16-bit is considered obsolete by Linux, Win32, *BSD. Heck, people are starting to say 32-bit is deprecated (eh??), as if 64-bit must kill everything else in order to justify itself (lame).

> What? You can GPL any 2- or 3-clause BSD licensed program all you like.
> (Sure, it's misconduct, but you're legally allowed to.)

How can you require someone to submit their changes without you having changed any of the code itself? I mean legally, you really think that's possible? I think you can only optionally license your own additions as GPL, which means the whole must be "GPL-compatible", right? The original bits would still remain as-is.

> > Besides, nobody
> > needs or wants to do so with FASM, and it's already been used
> commercially
> > in many places, so it's "moot".
>
> It's partly a question of your philosophy (i.e. the source code is free and
> its freedom is "defended" (Copyleft), or the user is free), but then it's
> also that I feel cheated reading a 2-clause BSD license and then some lazy
> Copyleft notice. It's like the Sybase license thing all over again.
The Sybase license is much more confusing and worse, by far.

> > 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.
>
> Why? All derivatives of BSD licensed software need to reproduce the
> copyright notice in the source code, documentation and other material
> anyway.
But if he doesn't prevent people from not sharing their modifications, I guess he doesn't want anybody else forcing that upon them either.

> > And Japheth is right, it lacks OMF, but so does DJGPP.
>
> DJGPP is a toolchain primarily intended for C development of 32-bit DPMI
> programs. FASM is an assembler that ostensibly supports 16-bit DOS targets.
FASM is a 32-bit assembler and only runs on 32-bit, not 16-bit. It assembles itself without needing to use a linker, and in most cases it avoids such. I think only as an afterthought did Tomasz even add linkable object support. So he personally doesn't need it, so he hasn't implemented it.

> Do you see the difference? (Yes, there's an OMF 32-bit format but you don't
> need that for DPMI development with DJGPP because DJGPP gives you the whole
> toolchain for COFF anyway and 32-bit OMF isn't that widely used.)
32-bit OMF is still used somewhat (Digital Mars, OpenWatcom) but didn't Borland and MS handle it differently? So it's quite complex, which makes implementing it that much harder.

DJGPP only uses COFF in lieu of (older) a.out, esp. since GNU ld (Binutils) already had support for it. GCC and pals are heavily *nix-oriented, which means OMF isn't important to them since it's only used on x86.

> > Besides, there are already tons of existing tools that handle that,
> > so adding it to FASM wouldn't hurt but isn't a priority.
>
> Particularly, you cannot link 16-bit DOS programs consisting of
> separate modules (possible created by different assemblers or
> compilers) with any FASM source code because the OMF format is just
> the 16-bit DOS object format.

Right, because FASM wasn't designed that way, the author is only one person, he'd rather focus on other features. Plus OMF is complex, not trivial, so even if he wanted, it would take quite a while to shake out the bugs, and there truly isn't enough interest in OMF these days.

> I mean, come on. Acceptable OMF
> support is even implemented in NASM, and it's so free you can just copy or
> adapt its code (even for "proprietary" Copyleft licensed software such as
> FASM).
NASM 2.07 was first to be BSD-licensed, and it's not that old, so FASM couldn't verbatim (well, you know what I mean) borrow from it anyways until then, esp. since Tomasz prefers pure x86 assembly in lieu of C.

> (Okay, please just tell me you did not say the "tons of existing
> tools" are the reason OMF doesn't have priority for 16-bit DOS support.
It doesn't have priority to FASM's author because NASM, ArrowASM, LZASM, WASM, JWASM, Wolfware w/ macros, TASM, MASM, A86, Optasm?, etc. etc. all already support it.

> Because if you did say so, I would have to answer that precisely they
> are the reason OMF does have some priority for 16-bit DOS support.)
16-bit isn't cool anymore, so nobody cares. :-(

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