Hi! 18-Мар-2004 08:36 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Hall) wrote to [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
>> Or I misunderstand GPL and it prevents packing GPLed programs into archives >> (by unfree programs or programs, with proprietary compression schemes) and JH> No, I think you misunderstand the GNU GPL. Packing GPL'd programs into JH> archives that may contain other non-free programs is considered mere JH> aggregation (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?aggregation). You JH> can distictly identify the free and non-free components, and may JH> separate them if you wish. Since you can identify them, it is also easy JH> to provide the source code for the GPL'd components, to meet the JH> conditions of the GNU GPL. Well, I see the point, but should say, that I _may_ identify presence of exepacking stub and I _may_ depack packed executable (thus "separate" them). Of course, unpacked executable not neccessarily will be binary identical with original, non-packed executable, but GPL doesn't says that changing bytes in executable (until it remains functionally identical to original) is prohibited (and this may be somewhat identical to recompiling sources by different compiler). Moreover, let me expand this further. Imagine, someone "flash" GPLed program into ROM and sells this ROM. Is this prohibited (because there are no way to extract original executable from this ROM)? PS: I think, there isn't enoughly well defined terms "OS part", "file", "executable". For example, what about Fort systems, where "executables" (a'la p-code) after compilation become part of system kernel? ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id70&alloc_id638&op=click _______________________________________________ Freedos-kernel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-kernel
