Re: source dependencies

[Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mozcom.com>]

On 22 Jul 1997, Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:

> >Another problem is that bin86 is necessary to compile a kernel (i386) and
> >that bin86 _should_ be put in non-free...
> 
> Why? I'm not sure which version Debian uses, but I remember that
> Bruce Evans put the GPL on bin86 a few years ago especially for Linux.

/usr/doc/bin86/copyright says:

  [...]
  This is the as86 and ld86 distribution written by Bruce Evans.  It's
  copyright Bruce Evans, all rights reserved although you may use and copy
  it for your personal use.  It's a complete 8086 assembler and loader
  which can make 32-bit code for the 386+ processors (under linux it's
  used only to create the 16-bit bootsector and setup binaries).  The
  syntax is not compatible with the GNU assembler, but closer to intel
  syntax ("wrong" order of operands etc).

This seems to be a clear DFSG violation, which should relegate bin86 to
non-free =8-().

I tried to contact Bruce Evans about this several times, a year or three
ago, but never was able to make contact.  Bruce was a major contributor
to comp.os.minix, and I had occasion to exchange email with him
a few times in my minix-hacking days.  I remember him as a very
reasonable and helpful person.

Hmmmmmm.... Now that you mention it, I do seem to remember hearing
somewhere that Bruce had sent Linus something about OK'ing the use
of bin86 for linux.  I don't recall the details, though.


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