On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 03:23:17PM +0000, hyjial wrote:
| Hi list !
| Reading through OpenBSD's codebase, I have noticed that the code
| living
| under src/usr.sbin/pkg_add is written in Perl. Perl is distributed
| under the Artistic license, though. The latter is not as permissive
| as the BSD
| license under which monst of OpenBSD is released. No doubt
| that is the reason
| why Perl lives in src/gnu.
| Why have such a tool using a non-BSD package when
| there was choice
| not to do so ?
| What technical reasons have lead the
| developers to elect this
| language ?
| I am just curious about the fact and
| didn't manage to find information
| in tech@ and mis@ archives.

So, first of .. your indenting could use some help...

Anyway, perl is distributed under the artistic license, yet the
pkg-tools are licensed under an ISC-style license.

Compare, if you will, with most other tools in OpenBSD. They're C
programs with an ISC or BSD-style license. However, GCC is distributed
under the GPL. Boo-freakidy-hoo .. why make a problem of the perl
license now, is bashing GCC's license not fun anymore ?

You know, if you want, you could write an ISC-licensed perl
interpreter. Go right ahead and feel free to send patches when you're
done. I'll suggest a name for you : 'hurl'. If you're done, could you
please write an ISC-licensed C-compiler in perl so I can finally shut
up all the idiots that claim that a system without a compiler is more
secure ? Don't worry, I can wait.

Cheers,

Paul 'WEiRD' de Weerd

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