Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 00:23:11 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Producing non-GPLed tools for FreeBSD Message-ID: <4.1.19981019000937.06571220@mail.lariat.org>
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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.
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.
Thus, without descriptions of the output formats that do not require me to
read the source code, I can't produce tools that I am 100% sure can be
licensed under the Berkeley license and/or sold as commercial products.
(This is, perhaps, precisely the sort of "trap" Richard Stallman intended
to set when he wrote the GPL in the first place: making it difficult to
develop alternatives.)
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.
--Brett Glass
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