Re: [GNU-linux-libre] has dosemu freedom issues?

[Henry Jensen]

Hello Sam,

I am CC'ing this to the Parabola GNU/Linux list, since they have dosemu in their
community repo.

On Sat, 18 Dec 2010 21:29:48 +0100
Sam Geeraerts <address@hidden> wrote:

> So dosemu is libre and FreeDOS is libre, but FreeDOS can only be built 
> with non-free tools? 

Exactly.

> That last step is not good, but it's beyond what we 
> should worry about, IMO. 

After some thinking I am not sure about that. Dosemu is in Debian
contrib (it isn't included in Trisquel or gnewsense), a repo for free
software which depends on non-free software to use or build.

The source package of Debians dosemu contains a binary and a source
tarball of FreeDOS, the accompanied README states:

"The dosemu team itself has not compiled everything from those
sources, but most are copied and stripped down (deleting files and
symlinking duplicates) to tailor a minimal system. This work has been
done manually (no script) and the resulting tree is simply tar'ed to
build dosemu-freedos-bin.tgz."

In more concrete words: To build FreeDOS binaries you have to use
non-free software. By delivering the FreeDOS sources (required by the
GPL) we would suggest, that the user installs non-free software, which
is not desirable.

> > OpenWatcom is released under the "Open Watcom Public License". The FSF 
> > license list don't 
> > mention it.
> > 
> > Has anyone more insight regarding this matter?
> 
> There's a debian-legal thread about it [1].
> 
> At first glance I'd say at least section 2.2(c) is a problem: if you 
> modify the software and install it at your workplace, then you have to 
> make your modifications available to everyone, not just those you gave 
> the binaries to.
> 
> [1] http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg34680.html

Yes, you're right, additionally there seem to be other matters, e. g.
12.1(c) strikes me as even more obvious non-free, as it says that the
license terminates if you "commence an action for patent infringement
against Sybase or any Contributor."

So, I think that, because of this matter, Dosemu should be listed on 
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines

(theoratical) fixes would be
a) to port FreeDOS to djgpp
b) to replace FreeDOS with another free DOS that can be built with free
software (someone mentioned a nasm port of RxDOS, but I haven't found a
copy)


Regards,

Henry