Re: Why it's so difficult to fix PowerMac booting for good
Hi!
On Sun, 2023-05-28 at 12:19 +0200, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> Yes, that is the main problem. FWIW, I have reached out to Apple's Legal
> Department and asked them whether it would be possible to relicense the
> »hfs« package under a more permissive license such as MIT or any of the
> BSD licenses.
>
> The source code for the HFS(+) filesystem utilities used to be part of the
> »diskdev_cmds« [1] package but was later split into its own package called
> »hfs« [2].
>
> I argued that the »hfs« package is required for interoperability and it would
> make it for distributions much easier to ship the »hfs« package if its covered
> by a truly free license.
>
> I guess that the fact that the HFS code got split out of »diskdev_cmds« could
> make it easier for Apple to change the license.
Alternatively, it would also help if Paragon released their HFS+ code [1] under a
free license. They have done that for their NTFS code already [2], so chances are
they would do it for the HFS+ stuff as well.
I have reached out to the Paragon developer who got the NTFS merged into the upstream
Linux kernel. Maybe they're willing to do that with the HFS+ code as well.
Adrian
> [1] https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-linux-professional
> [2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=f7464060f7ab9a2424428008f0ee9f1e267e410f
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
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