Re: gens License Check - Non-free
Benjamin Cutler wrote:
> I had another idea, though. I've noticed a few packages in contrib don't
> actually assemble the package until postinst... could I seperate gens
> into "gens" (all the GPL code) and "gens-nonfree" (mpg123 and
> Starscream), and have gens postinst call "ld" at install-time? The two
> packages would contain the relevant .o files... and would techinically
> be seperate packages.
That is commonly done for packages that allow distribution as source
only, or do not allow distribution of binaries built from modified
source. It does not get around the GPL's requirements. Quoting from
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html :
> Consider GNU Objective C. NeXT initially wanted to make this front
> end proprietary; they proposed to release it as .o files, and let
> users link them with the rest of GCC, thinking this might be a way
> around the GPL's requirements. But our lawyer said that this would
> not evade the requirements, that it was not allowed. And so they made
> the Objective C front end free software.
I would suggest finding another m68k CPU emulator, and modifying Gens to
use it. There are several available as part of Free Software system
emulators for systems based on the m68k, such as UAE (found via a quick
Google search, which turned up many more results that looked promising).
- Josh Triplett
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