Re: beta status
On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 08:04:22AM -0700, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 02:00:03PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 05:53:53AM -0700, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> > > On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 12:01:17PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 11:57:12AM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > > > > On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 10:45:30AM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > > > > > > On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > > > > > > Actually, we could simply make an exception for miboot and get it into the
> > > > > > > > archive, i think it is no worse than other cases (like amiboot, which is
> > > > > > > > linked to parts of amigaos, and thus non-free), and we do distribute those (or
> > > > > > > > at least used to distribute those in the woody times).
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Amiboot is not linked to parts of AmigaOS. It is linked to libnix.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > which in turn is not in the archive, so amiboot can never be in anything but
> > > > >
> > > > > It's statically linked (and libnix is public domain, according to Google :-).
> > > >
> > > > Still not in debian/main, so amiboot needs to go to contrib.
> > >
> > > libnix is an AmigaOS library, and is available on aminet, which IIRC predates
> > > Debian by a couple of years. Do you want to ship all free software on aminet
> > > with Debian now, too?
> >
> > Well, it depends on stuff outside of main for use/build, so cannot go in main.
>
> It is an AmigaOS binary, built from free source with free compilers. So we just have to
> include all the free AmigaOS software to be able to ship a precompiled amiboot? As I said,
> no problem with me, maybe we include all free TOS and MacOS software as well, ataboot and
> Penguin have to be compiled somehow as well. So why not include aminet, and what ever are
> the counterparts for atari, mac, maybe C64, Pet2001, those were nice machines as well,
> and maybe we still use something that was first developed on one of those machines. Would
> be a big boost for the emulator packages that are already in debian, and free software is
> free software...
>
> In case you did not get it yet, I think this would be a stupid thing, debian is about
> Un*x, Linux, *BSD software. Do we have DOS compilers as well? What about loadlin?
> The source(!) package contains a compiled loadlin.exe, but it also contains the source.
> The makefile says: To compile with Borland TASM 3.1. In case that assembler is still
> available, is it free software? Don't you need to run DOS to use it?
The main point is, do we ship it as part of the installer stuff, knowing it is
needed to boot, or even worse in the case of miboot, it needs to be built into
the images.
The problem with miboot is that there are 200 or so m68k instructions in the
boot sector, which have not been changed since over 10 years probably, and
probably nobody at appple even remembers them, and thus we are not shipping
miboot even in non-free, while at the same time distributing it from
people.debian.org.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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