On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 04:40:05PM -0400, Jeremy Huiskamp wrote: > On 23/05/08 04:21 PM, Han Boetes wrote: > >Yes but C is written in gcc which is GNU licensed and pkg_utils > >are written in perl which is a much more libaral language. I > >really start wondering why the whole of OpenBSD is not rewritten > >in perl! > > Ah, but perl is compiled with gcc, so that doesn't really help. ;)
Well it could. If the only compiled stuff was the kernel and an interpretive language (e.g. perl but not necessarily), then you wouldn't have to distribute anything that was gpl'd. You would use the OpenBSD'ed gcc to create the perl binaries and just ship those binaries and their source (ok, the gcc source too with a link to where to get the gcc version binaries to compile it). Security updates could then conceivably be manageable with binary updates for the kernel and perl, and everything else is already "source"-ish anyway. I learned Python when I couldn't figure out how to read the perl docs to learn perl. I'm sure somewhere in perldoc is how to read perldoc... Python was easy. As a side effect, it is fairly easy to port python to Ada if I need something to run faster. Now we can all review the "why isn't OpenBSD coded in Ada" thread. :) Doug.
