Re: Reproducible, precompiled .o files: what say policy+gpl?

["John H. Robinson, IV" <jaqque@debian.org>]

I am not subscribed to debian-legal

Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 10:01:05PM -0700, John H. Robinson, IV wrote:
> 
> I'm saying that a package built with ecc (or icc or whatever) is not
> the same package that you'll get if you build the same sources with
> gcc; it's significantly functionally different.

The only difference is in *performance*. If there are other differences,
then there is a bug in one of the two compilers. If you are equating
performance with functionality, then we are going to have a very hard
time communicating.

> Huh?  You ignored what I said: you can't make a stable update using a
> different compiler, because it can introduce both performance and (more
> importantly) new bugs, which is completely unacceptable for a Debian
> stable security update.

Actually, later in my previous message I accepted your agrument on
pragmatic grounds.

> Are you claiming that changing from one compiler to another, or changing
> optimization flags, can't introduce bugs?  If so, please stay away from
> any security-sensitive packages ... :)

I'm saying that it should not introduce bugs. In a perfect world, of
course. We don't live in one.

> > gcc is written under the GPL. I can write a non-free program, keep the
> > source entirely secret, and distribute my program in binary form only,
> > with a very restrictive license. The gcc license does not contaminate
> > the resultant binary (unless, of course, I put gcc code in my program).
> > Similarly, the ecc license should not prevent compiling GPL'd code. If
> > it did, ecc would be unsuitable for any purpose, period.
> 
> This doesn't seem relevant.

You are the one that brought up the bogus argument that if the icc
packaged one were introduced into main, that any end-user would have to
accept the icc license.

This is almost akin to saying that if a package were built on a vmware
virtual machine, the end-user would have to accept the vmware license,
or that the package would have to go into contrib.

-- 
John H. Robinson, IV          jaqque@debian.org
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