On Tue, 4 Mar 2003 at 16:48, Jonathan Saunders wrote:
> To be Free Software, I think it has to be able to built using
> Free tools and run in a Free environment. (That's my
> interpretation, at any rate.)
[snip]
> Similary, I'd think a Palm OS program (or a Windows program)
> could only be considered Free Software it it ran on a Free OS in
> addition to the Palm OS. The program would be Free, but the
> Palm OS version wouldn't be. It needs a non-Free environment to
> run and it requires the non-Free Palm OS SDK to build.
[snip]
> This is probably mincing words and there's probaly really a
> continuum of Free notions. I get a headache if I start trying to
> think about how the hardware, BIOS, and firmware fits it.
Another problem is that all of the original Free software was originally
written and compiled using non-free tools. While it is possible to
bootstrap from Free sources today, at some point back in the long chain of
compiles, cross-compiles, etc, in the depths of history, there was a
non-Free compiler that built something.
-alan
--
Alan Hoyle - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.alanhoyle.com/
"I don't want the world, I just want your half." -TMBG
Get Horizontal, Play Ultimate.
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