Re: Social Contract GR's Affect on sarge
> > As an aside... or as a possibly related issue, consider glibc -- here
> > is a piece of software which is licensed as free (though RMS might say
> > that the LGPL licensed components aren't as free as he'd like), but
> > which in practice is still distributed in almost-binary form (you can't
> > build current versions of glibc on linux without having extremely current
> > binaries because the version skew is so great). In essence, the preferred
> > form for working with this software must include its binaries...
On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 04:08:54PM +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
> Huh??? This procedure is called bootstrapping...
Yes. So?
If you can't build the sarge glibc from woody without first installing
binaries from sarge the bootstrapping procedure has turned glibc into
something that requires binaries -- there's some part of it which isn't
available in the sources.
> I don't believe this is related to the issue in any way and just dilutes
> your (valid, IMHO) point above.
It relates to the freeness of glibc.
More specifically, if glibc requires a binary component (a current
version of the glibc binaries) for its source to be built, then glibc
isn't distributable under the GPL. Since the FSF distributes glibc
they're not likely to prosecute, which means this is less of a legal
issue and more of a DFSG issue.
--
Raul
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