On Friday 16 November 2012 16:28:01 Felix Geyer wrote: > On 14.11.2012 15:30, Michael Meskes wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 10:56:50AM +0100, Felix Geyer wrote: > >> When you want to modify the BIOS you change the code in the files of the > >> first variant so only that is considered the source code of the BIOS. > > > > Well, you can change the assembler file directly. I wonder what happened > > if we just remove the OpenWatcom source files from the tarball? > > Removing the Open Watcom source files would be a GPL violation unless > upstream explicitly adds a license to the generated assembler files.
I think the generated assembler files contain all necessary copyright headers. > Anyway I fail to see how removing free source code files could change > anything in terms of DFSG-freeness of the whole thing. > > > Or if the developers hadn't told us but instead said they created the > > assembler file by hand? > > It's pretty hard to believe that someone could write and maintain 15,000 > lines of assembler code without a single comment. It's surely hard but not impossible. But I wouldn't continue arguing here. > >> That is a problem because it's impossible to modify the BIOS (e.g. by > >> adding a distro patch) without someone running Open Watcom. > > > > Why's that? We can change assembler source files, can't we? > > Sure, you can modify those assembler files but they are just a > post-processed compiler output. That means in practice you can't modify it > in a meaningful way. > In fact the files say "Auto Generated source file. Do not edit." ;-) > For example we would be unable to cherry-pick a BIOS fix from trunk. > > > I really wonder if we're trying to be more catholic than the pope here. > > I don't think so because where does it end? > With the same argument you could declare every disassembled binary that is > built from high level language code as source code. Again, we don't have a choice. If you cannot live with that change I regret that. Frank -- Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert | Software Development Director, VirtualBox ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG | Werkstr. 24 | 71384 Weinstadt, Germany Hauptverwaltung: Riesstr. 25, D-80992 München Registergericht: Amtsgericht München, HRA 95603 Geschäftsführer: Jürgen Kunz Komplementärin: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V. Hertogswetering 163/167, 3543 AS Utrecht, Niederlande Handelsregister der Handelskammer Midden-Niederlande, Nr. 30143697 Geschäftsführer: Alexander van der Ven, Astrid Kepper, Val Maher
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