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FASM's license (Announce)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 15.09.2010, 23:29

> > [...] did things the hard way for one example by writing an ELF
> > executable from scratch!
>
> Where's the problem? I'm not saying linkers ain't useful, but there are
> definitively cases for which (A) you don't need them or for which (B) you
> can't use them, usually because you require a specific executable format
> and data arrangement that you can't get the linker to do reliably/at all.
No, I was just saying that he didn't use a linker, which NASM pretty much requires for anything substantial (unlike FASM, who would apparently rather directly generate everything).

> > OCTASM is just different syntax, esp. multiple instructions on one line.
>
> All right, why not make Assembly language harder to understand. Come on.
> Most of the lines in my code have a comment anyway, why would I want to put
> multiple instructions on one line? It doesn't strike me as something I
> would want to encourage either.
Tastes vary. Besides, too many small instructions on the far left make the source file VERY long with lots of blanks at the right edge. (Surely you don't comment every single line, do you?) Also he made some shortcuts to simplify things (ax=1 ++di es=0B800h). It's really only if you like his style or just want to cram everything to be more dense, (arguably) easier to read. (Compare the FASM and Octasm versions of my improved BEFI, for instance, or just look at OctaOS' sources.)

Also check here for a small snippet. ;-)

> > Of course, he at first GPL'd the OS,
> > then closed it, opened it, closed it again, and now it's still closed
> (but
> > barely updated?).
>
> Ah, that sucks.
I forget why he got mad, but some people (including MenuetOS 32-bit) just die upon various fractures. Other projects just stagnate. Not enough interest and help and good will to go around, I guess.

> > Not Linux compatible? OBSOLETE! :lol:
> What??? Why would you want to use Loonix!! It's made of BLOAT :crying:
> :clap:
No worse than XP (1.5 GB) or Vista/7 (16-20 GB). But I do suggest you read Wirth's 1995 Plea for Lean Software article. Very good points, but severely ignored! (I need to read it again myself.) "How did he ever get real work done in less than 4096 MB of RAM???" :-D :rotfl:

> I think their "too much maintenance" was specifically aimed at the
> constraints on 16-bit programming (especially in RM/V86),

No, it's more of a "we're all for POSIX ... as long as that means Linux Linux Linux", just an excuse to refuse patches. Anything that doesn't directly support Linux or GCC (32-bit/64-bit) or their political agenda is verboten.

> which weren't
> re-introduced with AMD64. (In fact, I hear the calling conventions and code
> generation became simpler because there are more registers.)

Somewhat yes, but it wasn't that hard before! It's not like they forgot how they did it all these years. Besides, how hard can it be to just save/restore registers across calls? Not very.

> Specifying
> this reason for why you don't want to support multiple architectures is
> non-sense unless you're writing gcc or libc. All the other stuff is written
> in HLLs and only needs to be portable enough, which it should be anyway.
"Should be", yeah, but never are. 32-bit assumptions, POSIX 2008, everything-is-*nix, etc. I guess you know it's an uphill battle for anybody else. The only reason non-*nix (i.e. Windows) gets anything is extreme popularity. (Well, Win32-only programming is also rampant.)

We need to work hard to avoid such assumptions, esp. that all the world runs one of the "big three" (Mac, Win, Lin). DOS386, this is why emulators are important. Even if x86 isn't available, we can still run DOS (via QEMU or VirtualBox or BOCHS or DOSBox, etc). Face it, DOS is (or was) widespread, lots of good software, but it is (sadly?) tied very strongly to x86 exclusively. Though we shouldn't let any of that prevent us from writing portable programs for future use (when appropriate, I know sometimes it's less critical, esp. if the software has no use elsewhere, relates to DOS only).

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