From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Oct 20 08:32:18 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id IAA26366 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Tue, 20 Oct 1998 08:32:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from lariat.lariat.org (lariat.lariat.org [206.100.185.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA26361 for ; Tue, 20 Oct 1998 08:32:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from brett@lariat.org) Received: (from brett@localhost) by lariat.lariat.org (8.8.8/8.8.6) id JAA03337; Tue, 20 Oct 1998 09:31:00 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <4.1.19981020091349.06ac29d0@mail.lariat.org> X-Sender: brett@mail.lariat.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 09:28:52 -0600 To: Marius Bendiksen , David Holland From: Brett Glass Subject: Re: Producing non-GPLed tools for FreeBSD Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19981020162222.0091a640@mail.scancall.no> References: <4.1.19981019150118.06775920@mail.lariat.org> <98Oct19.164437edt.37814-9002@qew.cs.toronto.edu> <4.1.19981019000937.06571220@mail.lariat.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 04:22 PM 10/20/98 +0200, Marius Bendiksen wrote: >Have you considered switching to a non-AT&T-syntax compiler, such as NASM? >As I recall, NASM does not suffer from GPL... The NASM license is essentially the GPL. To quote from the docs: Basically, NASM is free. You can't charge for it. You can copy it as much as you like. You can incorporate it, or bits of it, into other free programs if you want. (But we want to know about it if you do, and we want to be mentioned in the credits.) We may well allow you to incorporate it into commercial software too, but we'll probably demand some money for it, and we'll certainly demand to be given credit. And in extreme cases (although I can't immediately think of a reason we might actually want to do this) we may refuse to let you do it at all. >I'm pretty fluent at 'normal' syntax assembly, though I'm a bit rusty with >p+ instructions and the coprocessor. I have no real experience in parsers, >though.. Parsing assembly language is pretty easy. The trickiest part of the "normal" syntax is that the validity (or non-validity) and semantics of a statement may depend on context. For instance, "assume" directives can change the semantics of statements that follow them. The assembler has to be worried about segmentation, and must search for the segment register through which it can "reach" a symbol. It gets tricky. That's why Borland invented its "ideal" Intel assembly language syntax. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message