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On Wednesday 25 February 2004 00:32, Jason Stubbs wrote: |
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> On Tuesday 17 February 2004 12:17, Donnie Berkholz wrote: |
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> > We won't be adding versions of XFree86 with the 1.1 license [1] to the |
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> > tree, so don't be surprised when 4.3.99.903 doesn't show up with the new |
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> > license. |
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> > |
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> > I won't elaborate on the reasons because it's been discussed quite |
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> > thoroughly in other forums. |
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> |
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> I hate to kick a dead horse, but... |
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> |
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> I've read all the reasons and understand them and don't wish to dispute |
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> them, but I do have one small question. What's the difference between this |
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> situation and the GPL'd Linux kernel "linking" against functions in the |
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> close-sourced BIOS, ACPI, APM, etc, etc? |
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|
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The kernel doesn't link against those things. Actually the kernel doesn't link |
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against anything ouside of the kernel itself (i.e. glibc, etc.) since those |
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things wouldn't be available when the kernel is starting. Using hardware |
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features is quite a bit different than linking against certain libraries. |
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It's kind of the same as the difference between kernel space and user space |
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(but not even close). We can have non-gpl'ed userspace programs even if they |
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call the kernel in some way (and they all do, even a open() eventually gets |
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to the kernel). |
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|
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--Iggy |
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|
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> |
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> Regards, |
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> Jason Stubbs |
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> |
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> -- |
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> gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |
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|
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-- |
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http://www.brianandsara.net |
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-- |
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