[Pkg-virtualbox-devel] Bug#691148: Bug#691148: Bug#691148: Bug#691148: Please package virtualbox 4.2.2

[Felix Geyer]

On 14.11.2012 15:30, Michael Meskes wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 10:56:50AM +0100, Felix Geyer wrote:
>> When you want to modify the BIOS you change the code in the files of the
>> first variant so only that is considered the source code of the BIOS.
> 
> Well, you can change the assembler file directly. I wonder what happened if we
> just remove the OpenWatcom source files from the tarball?

Removing the Open Watcom source files would be a GPL violation unless upstream
explicitly adds a license to the generated assembler files.
Anyway I fail to see how removing free source code files could change anything in terms
of DFSG-freeness of the whole thing.

> Or if the developers hadn't told us but instead said they created the assembler file by hand?

It's pretty hard to believe that someone could write and maintain 15,000 lines
of assembler code without a single comment.

>> That is a problem because it's impossible to modify the BIOS (e.g. by adding
>> a distro patch) without someone running Open Watcom.
> 
> Why's that? We can change assembler source files, can't we? 

Sure, you can modify those assembler files but they are just a post-processed
compiler output. That means in practice you can't modify it in a meaningful
way.
In fact the files say "Auto Generated source file. Do not edit." ;-)
For example we would be unable to cherry-pick a BIOS fix from trunk.

> I really wonder if we're trying to be more catholic than the pope here. 

I don't think so because where does it end?
With the same argument you could declare every disassembled binary that is built
from high level language code as source code.

Regards,
Felix