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Re: OT: SETI@HOME on Alphas



On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, Donsbach, Jeff wrote:

> So, that is the history. The current clients are built from the exact
> same source as all the other platforms. They are all built with the
> Compaq "cxx" compiler. On Linux, the client is linked statically since
> not everyone has the Compaq "libcpml" and "libots" installed (like
> Debian users mainly; RedHat and SuSe users usually install them).

That's because we had to run the RPMs through alien up until recently
:-)  Also, since the license is restrictive wrt redistribution, I
originally decided not to package them and violate the license.

For awhile, I was trying to supply Compaq with debs that were "built" via
alien, but that had better dependencies, etc, but after awhile, nobody
at Compaq notified me of new releases and it also seemed that my uploads
of the debs weren't being posted/accepted, so I assumed that Compaq had
lost interest in any kind of Debian support for those libs.

Jeff, I'm curious as to why RedHat/SuSE can redistribute the binaries when
the license prohibits it for everyone else.  I understand that special
licensing terms were probably agreed to with those parties, but nobody
ever approached Debian or me about doing the same, even outside of the
Debian archive (if that kind of thing was disagreeable for some reason).
Granted, one of our maintainers took it upon himself to make an
"installer" style package that ftp's the binaries from the Compaq ftp
site, but I still would like to see the binaries included in the
distribution if at all possible (even if it's in non-free).

> If you want to know more, contact me "off list" so we don't clog up the
> Debian list with OT SETI stuff.

Actually, this is quite interesting.  I know most of the story already
from various former Compaq and API employees, but I'm sure others are
curious as to where those really fast result times came from :-)

C



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