Re: beta status
On 11/4/05, Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 08:04:22AM -0700, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 02:00:03PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 05:53:53AM -0700, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 12:01:17PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 11:57:12AM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > > > > > On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > > > > > On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 10:45:30AM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Actually, we could simply make an exception for miboot and get it into the
> > > > > > > > > archive, i think it is no worse than other cases (like amiboot, which is
> > > > > > > > > linked to parts of amigaos, and thus non-free), and we do distribute those (or
> > > > > > > > > at least used to distribute those in the woody times).
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Amiboot is not linked to parts of AmigaOS. It is linked to libnix.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > which in turn is not in the archive, so amiboot can never be in anything but
> > > > > >
> > > > > > It's statically linked (and libnix is public domain, according to Google :-).
> > > > >
> > > > > Still not in debian/main, so amiboot needs to go to contrib.
> > > >
> > > > libnix is an AmigaOS library, and is available on aminet, which IIRC predates
> > > > Debian by a couple of years. Do you want to ship all free software on aminet
> > > > with Debian now, too?
> > >
> > > Well, it depends on stuff outside of main for use/build, so cannot go in main.
> >
> > It is an AmigaOS binary, built from free source with free compilers. So we just have to
> > include all the free AmigaOS software to be able to ship a precompiled amiboot? As I said,
> > no problem with me, maybe we include all free TOS and MacOS software as well, ataboot and
> > Penguin have to be compiled somehow as well. So why not include aminet, and what ever are
> > the counterparts for atari, mac, maybe C64, Pet2001, those were nice machines as well,
> > and maybe we still use something that was first developed on one of those machines. Would
> > be a big boost for the emulator packages that are already in debian, and free software is
> > free software...
> >
> > In case you did not get it yet, I think this would be a stupid thing, debian is about
> > Un*x, Linux, *BSD software. Do we have DOS compilers as well? What about loadlin?
> > The source(!) package contains a compiled loadlin.exe, but it also contains the source.
> > The makefile says: To compile with Borland TASM 3.1. In case that assembler is still
> > available, is it free software? Don't you need to run DOS to use it?
>
> The main point is, do we ship it as part of the installer stuff, knowing it is
> needed to boot, or even worse in the case of miboot, it needs to be built into
> the images.
>
> The problem with miboot is that there are 200 or so m68k instructions in the
> boot sector, which have not been changed since over 10 years probably, and
> probably nobody at appple even remembers them, and thus we are not shipping
> miboot even in non-free, while at the same time distributing it from
> people.debian.org.
>
> Friendly,
>
> Sven Luther
>
I have used miBoot on a nubus ppc mac (6116cd) and it is not the
optimal solution. My suggestion as a user is that you forget about
using miBoot at all, and foster development for a new GPL'ed
bootloader based on EMILE. Laurent (EMILE author) has said it is a
matter of limited time that EMILE is not written to support ppc. Focus
on EMILE for 68k and nubus ppc.
Eric
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