Re: [SUMMARY] packages useless without non-free servers? (Was: a giant flamewar that's gotten hot as hell itself!)
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> writes:
> I generally believe this is the same as the system BIOS and these things
> should probably be allowed into main if they are otherwise free. An
> example of the kind of thing coming to mind would be a SDK for a system
> that runs on Linux and then the emulator to test them. Since I don't
> actually know of any SDKs on Linux that have matching emulators at the
> moment, I'll not push this one.
Okay, here's an example, and it's already packaged: the PalmPilot
tools. The cross-compiler kit (prc-tools) is based on gcc et. al.,
and as such is completely free. The emulator (xcopilot) is also free,
but of course requires a ROM image to do anything. At present,
prc-tools is in main, and xcopilot is in contrib.
Of course, this particular situation is a bit unusual, in that there
is a Linux kernel for the target hardware! It isn't useful in the
general sense yet, nor is it intended to be (it is intended for
embedded control applications and the like), but it runs. In fact, it
runs perfectly well on xcopilot...
(The Linux port is at <http://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/uClinux/>, by the
way.)
--Rob
--
Rob Tillotson N9MTB <robt@debian.org>
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