Re: Article: IBM wants to "clean up the license" of Linux

Joel Klecker (jk@espy.org)
Wed, 6 Jan 1999 15:45:45 -0800


At 21:33 -0500 1999-01-04, Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:
>No, but they're the "OEM" of the user-space component of all existing Linux
>distributions. One can envision a Linux kernel with a BSD libc, which would
>carry a canonical triple of "x86-bsd-linux". Or even Sun pulling some
>strangeness for low-end systems, with a Solaris-derived libc
>("x86-sun-linux").

The vendor part refers to hardware vendor, not software, so unless
BSD becomes a hardware vendor, I find the possibility of
"x86-bsd-linux" impossible (going by the existance of
CPU_TYPE-MANUFACTURER-KERNEL-OPERATING_SYSTEM (according to
config.sub), x86-pc-linux-bsd would be possible (ignoring that "x86"
is not allowed yet)).

>Yeah, "pc" is pretty lousy --- but it's also what's already in use. Then
>again, as a behavior selector it's pretty much useless. The hypothetical
>systems above would also qualify for it....

There is this in config.sub:

# We use `pc' rather than `unknown'
# because (1) that's what they normally are, and
# (2) the word "unknown" tends to confuse beginning users.
i[34567]86)
basic_machine=$basic_machine-pc
;;

--
Joel Klecker (aka Espy)                     <URL:http://web.espy.org/>
<URL:mailto:jk@espy.org>                  <URL:mailto:espy@debian.org>
Debian GNU/Linux PowerPC -- <URL:http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/>

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