I heard that you were considering a proprietary executable compression scheme for FreeDOS. I'm just writing to let you know the licensing and freedom implications of this.
The compressor rewrites an executable (in the FreeDOS case, one under the GPL), inserting decompression code. This creates a derivative work of the GPL software, so the decompression code at least would need to be under the GPL.
The copyright holders of FreeDOS could write an exception to allow non-GPL decompressor code. In order to do this, all copyright holders would have to agree. This would solve the licensing problem, but the output of the decompressor would not be Free Software. So, I hope you won't choose to use a non-free executable compressor.
Thank you for your posting here! Joergen forwarded me your answer to his questions. Please be assured that nobody here would agree to break the spirit or the letter of the GPL, and a solution will be found for this problem, which will at least include what you suggested, so no exceptions to the GPL would be necessary! But the discussion with Joergen has not ended yet. Let's be more patient. Meanwhile, we'll keep using UPX, which is released under the GPL, with the exception of its proprietary compression library called NRV = "Not Really Vanished" by Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer.
Regards, Lucho
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