On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, tom ehlert wrote: > DT> I heard that you were considering a proprietary executable compression > DT> scheme for FreeDOS. > could you explain 'proprietary' ? > > is everything non-GPL 'proprietary' ?
proprietary is everything that is (in the eyes of the FSF) not Free Software. Definitely not everything non-GPL, but "Proprietary software is software that is not free or semi-free. Its use, redistribution or modification is prohibited, or requires you to ask for permission, or is restricted so much that you effectively can't do it freely." [http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/categories.html#TOCProprietarySoftware] any closed-source software is proprietary by this definition, since you are generally not allowed to modify it. Confusing? Well it's the FSF terminology and impossible to understand them without understanding the language. > the compressor is available to everyone, but simply does not allow > free distribution of compressed executables, if used comercially. it does not allow you to modify the stub. That's the main point. > could you explain the difference between a compiler and compressor ? > both take file X as input and produce Y as output. the compressor is not the problem. It is the stub. > GPL is a SOURCE license, not an EXECUTABLE one. > so I MAY COMPILE* some GPL code with the non-free MSVC compiler and > linker, but MAY NOT use option /EXEPACK ? here you are hitting the nail in that it is practically spoken a legal issue. /EXEPACK can be argued to be normally distributed with the compiler and is therefore part of the "special exception". Using APACK instead of EXEPACK is like using a third party RTL instead of the one shipped with the compiler. A FreeDOS binary GPLedprogram that is packed with APACK will consist of three sections: a) portions directly derived from our source (GPLed) b) RTL sections (part of compiler, covered by exception in GPL) c) APACK stub. Conflicts The practical question for you, if you want to release some source code and wish to choose a license is to answer the following: 1. Do I want to prevent others to derive closed-source applications from my source code? If Yes: a. do i want to prevent linkage with closed or non-GPL compatible libraries/stubs that are not part of the compiler? If Yes: GPL is a good choice If No: LGPL is a good choice If No: choose a simple license such as BSD or MIT/X11 they are all listed here: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ IANAL Bart ------------------------------------------------------- The SF.Net email is sponsored by EclipseCon 2004 Premiere Conference on Open Tools Development and Integration See the breadth of Eclipse activity. February 3-5 in Anaheim, CA. http://www.eclipsecon.org/osdn _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
