[ On Monday, November 10, 2003 at 12:57:33 (-0800), Jason Thorpe wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: bc and dc revisited.
>
> I think, in general, we should strive to use non-GPL'd versions of 
> tools when there are credible alternatives available (e.g. there are no 
> credible alternatives to GDB, Binutils, and GCC).

True -- at least not for the base OS distribution.

However there are very credible alternatives for those willing to spend
money on them (or for those who are at least able and willing to agree
to hobbiest licenses such as the one for Compaq C for the Alpha), and I
think it would be very useful to work slowly but surely towards
supporting direct use of commercial compilers to build NetBSD.  There's
also pkgsrc/lang/lcc for testing with.  :-)

The first step is probably to support building of userland programs with
-D_POSIX_C_SOURCE using the native headers and libraries.  Dropping the
need to restrict support to code that can work with -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE is
probably the next step, and then comes the kernel!  ;-)

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098                  VE3TCP            RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
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