> Here's a teaser for all the licence enthusiasts here. > > FreeDOS includes components which are licensed under the GPL. Those > components are currently built with a compiler from Borland, and > consequently linked with the C library that comes with it. The licence > of the library is of course not compatible with the GPL. > > The question is, can the C library from Borland be considered a part of > the operating system (FreeDOS in this case)? > > This will decide whether we can distribute FreeDOS binary packages as > currently it requires the Borland compiler to build.
Hmm. This is a tough one. The relevant lines from the GPL are However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. This implies that the compiler is considered to be a major part of the operating system, whether it really is or not. The question is then, which compiler? I would submit that any compiler will do. The license doesn't specify how you build up an "operating system", and there are a multitude of ways to do it. This conclusion is not straightforward, and I could easily imagine beng converted to a different viewpoint. In that case, FreeDOS will have to go into contrib, since it has a build-depends on non-free software. This is assuming that the static libraries can be distributed freely. If there are any use restrictions on Borlands library, then it has to go into non-free. Regards, Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
