Re: mintlib stuff

[ersmith@netcom.com (Eric R. Smith)]

>   one more suggestion for the mintlibs.
>   I am currently busy porting the GNU shell-utils, and I noticed that
>   the getopt() from the GNU libs is more powerful & flexible than the
>   one in the mintlibs. Perhaps you could move GNU getopt() into the 
>   mintlibs?

>I'd like Eric's opinion on this, so I'm CC:'ing him on this message.
>I seem to recall Eric making noises at one point about not wanting GNU
>code in the library due to the copyleft restrictions (hence the broken
>scanf() in the mint libs).  Am I correct on this, Eric?

Yes. My objection is simply that once there's a GPL'd or GLPL'd file in
the libraries, then *every* program compiled with the libraries must
be distributed under the GNU license (or something like it). That means
in particular that nobody could produce truly public domain programs
with the library; nor could it be used for commercial purposes (so
I couldn't use it to produce programs at Atari, unless I could convince
Atari management that all such programs should be copylefted). Basically,
it means forcing a particular distribution policy on people; and while
I generally support the aims and means of the Free Software Foundation,
I do not support the idea of coercing people to use the same means.

Having said all that, the ultimate decision must be yours, of course.
You're the library maintainer now, and so you get the final say; and
certainly many of the GNU functions are superior to the ones in
the library now.

(If we can ever get shared libraries into MiNT then this becomes
moot; the GNU library license is quite appropriate for shared libraries,
since in that case it's not necessary to distribute source or object
files in order to allow users to link with newer versions of the library.
Don't hold your breath waiting for shared libraries to happen, though;
other things have priority right now (like actually getting a working
version of MultiTOS out the door) :-( ).

>I decided to dive in and get everything done last night instead of
>waiting until the weekend.  So I'm all up to date now, and as soon as
>Eric sends me all his undone patches and I merge them in, I'll be
>ready to ship patchlevel 26.

Sorry about the delay. I'll try to get those to you ASAP. By the way,
do you have bammi's update27? That has some fixes to the common code
as well.

Regards,
Eric