From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Oct 19 15:28:27 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA27025 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Mon, 19 Oct 1998 15:28:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from smtp04.primenet.com (smtp04.primenet.com [206.165.6.134]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA27020 for ; Mon, 19 Oct 1998 15:28:25 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert@usr07.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp04.primenet.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA22233; Mon, 19 Oct 1998 15:27:56 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr07.primenet.com(206.165.6.207) via SMTP by smtp04.primenet.com, id smtpd022210; Mon Oct 19 15:27:50 1998 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr07.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA19542; Mon, 19 Oct 1998 15:27:43 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199810192227.PAA19542@usr07.primenet.com> Subject: Re: Producing non-GPLed tools for FreeBSD To: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith) Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 22:27:43 +0000 (GMT) Cc: brett@lariat.org, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <199810190637.XAA16847@dingo.cdrom.com> from "Mike Smith" at Oct 18, 98 11:37:10 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > I'm interested in producing some programming tools that will aid in the > > development of code for FreeBSD. Unfortunately, when I've asked various > > people about such things as the object and executable formats, they've all > > told me that there was no documentation of these things, and that the best > > way to do this was to UTSL ("Use the source, Luke!"). I was pointed, in > > particular, to the as(1) assembler and ld(1) linker. > > As has been mentioned previously, the ELF object format is copiously > described by the ELF documentation, sources for which have been posted > here several times. See also "man a.out". > > Unfortunately, when I looked for the source in the 3.0-current tree, I > > discovered, to my horror, that both programs were in the /src/gnu > > subdirectory. This creates a problem. Technically, if I use GPLed source, I > > must GPL the resulting product. And both as(1) and ld(1) are GPLed. > > Binutils uses libbfd, which unfortunately is licensed under the GPL, > not the LGPL. No need to really rehash this here; the statement misses the distinction between "use" and "utilize". You can "utilize" GPL'ed code all you want. > > If I'm going to start doing language compilers (and an optimizing > > assembler) for FreeBSD, I need descriptions of the object format, > > executable format, register usage conventions, parameter passing > > conventions, and library conventions that are independent of any GPLed > > code. How can I obtain these? These would also be required by any > > commercial developer (say, Green Hills, Borland, or Watcom) who wished to > > develop tools for FreeBSD, so they wouldn't just be for MY benefit; they're > > necessary to open up the tools market to ANYONE other than the FSF. The main issue is the assmebler. For a compiler that can produce ELF code, and which is under a BSD-style license, do a net search on "TenDRA". Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message