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Debian GNU/kFreeBSD may be dropped from Debian 8

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday October 08 2014, @01:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the needs-a-systemd-port dept.

Anonymous Coward writes:

According to an email sent to the Debian debian-devel-announce mailing list by Adam D. Barratt, the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port is in grave danger of being dropped from the upcoming Debian 8 "Jessie" release. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD runs the GNU userland tools, the GNU C library and the Debian package set on top of the FreeBSD kernel.

Barratt states:

We remain gravely concerned about the viability of this port. Despite the reduced scope, we feel that the port is not currently of sufficient quality to feature as a fully supported release architecture in Jessie.

We therefore advise the kFreeBSD porters that the port is in danger of being dropped from Jessie, and invite any porters who are able to commit to working on the port in the long term to make themselves known *now*.

We will assess the viability of kFreeBSD in Jessie on or after 1st November, and a yes/no decision will be taken at that time.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 08 2014, @04:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 08 2014, @04:15PM (#103645)

    Well, the license is annoying

    I disagree in that ...

    and we're now seeing the exactly how much harm the open source ecosystem suffered from GCC's refusal to put in clean layering.

    ... but I fully agree with that.

    Indeed, I'd argue that by making the code intentionally hard to dissect and adapt, Stallman has effectively made gcc less free, as in less supporting of the four software freedoms he himself stated; more exactly, of the following freedom:

    "The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1)."

    The design of gcc means that you are actively hindered from learning how the program works, and from changing it to do your computing as you wish. This was done explicitly from the the fear that someone would use those freedoms in order to circumvent them.

    Yes, you can do all those things with the source of gcc (and there are certainly people who did). But then, you also can do all those things from a normal executable, by disassembling it. It's just yet again more work.

    Lesson: When trying to protect freedom, be careful not to damage it by the very measures you're trying to protect it with.