On Thu, 19 Nov 2015 20:58:59 +0100
Joris van Rantwijk <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 2015-11-19, Attila Kinali wrote:
> > BTW: maybe it would be the right time to poke the debian people
> > again to update the packages, as the current ones are over 3 years old.
> > Maybe an NMU would be in order as well.
> 
> We have tried this and failed. The problem is: a fully functional GHDL
> distribution is not free software according to Debian guidelines due to use
> of IEEE library code. Packaging GHDL without IEEE libraries is possible in
> principle, but it would not be useful for most VHDL programmers.

It definitly does not make sense to distribute ghdl without the libray
code. Am I right that GHDL needs both the source code and a compiled
version of the libraries?

The only discussion I could find is 
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal/28046

Is there any other that I have missed?

If not, then I'll try to ask debian again, because the whole discussion
is pretty much misinformed on what the license is and why it's there.
The current "license" text in the standard is:

---schnipp---
16.8.5.2 Allowable modifications
Vendors of tools conforming to this standard shall not modify
the package declarations. However, a vendor may provide package
bodies for any of the packages in which subprograms are
rewritten for more efficient simulation or synthesis, provided
that the behavior of the rewritten subprograms remains the same
under simulation. The behavior of the original and rewritten
subprograms are the same if, for any combination of input
values, they return the same return values. The text of messages
associated with assertions may differ in the rewritten
subprogram. The package bodies for the NUMERIC_BIT and
NUMERIC_STD packages declare a constant named NO_WARNING that
has the value FALSE. A user may set NO_WARNING to TRUE and
reanalyze the package body to suppress warning messages
generated by calls to the functions in these packages. For this
reason:
   *    A tool vendor who rewrites the package body shall
preserve the declaration of the NO_WARNING constant to allow a
user to suppress warnings by editing and reanalyzing the package
body.
   *    A simulation tool vendor who provides a preanalyzed
version of the package body should also provide a mechanism for
suppressing warning messages generated by the package functions.
---schnapp---

If this is not good enough for debian to make at least a non-free package
with the ghdl libraries,....


                        Attila Kinali

-- 
Reading can seriously damage your ignorance.
                -- unknown

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