clarified goal

[muta...@gmail.com]

I think I now have my future mapped out.

If Earth says to me "we hate you Paul - fuck off to
Mars - but you are free to take any public domain
software with you, and your laptop and solar energy",
where do I stand?

Similar if it is a nuclear fallout shelter instead of Mars.

I have built PDOS/386 using copyrighted tools like gcc,
and SubC isn't quite C90. But I selected C90 as my
language, so that's what my source base is.

However, I can compile SubC itself, and SubC is good
enough to rebuild itself. So basically I will be stuck
until I master SubC and make it C90-compliant, or at
least the subset of the language I happen to use. Or I
change my code to be SubC-compliant. Whatever I am
willing to change SubC to be.

I don't need to do any of that right now. Plenty of time
on Mars. But I'm screwed right now because I don't have
an assembler/archiver/linker. But I recently found out
that simple versions of that to handle SubC output are
only a couple of thousand lines of code.

Therefore I should immediately switch my attention to
those products, before I am deported. Otherwise I would
be forced to use a hex editor (I have "zap") to write
machine code.

Note that some BBS message reading software I have
has the ability to export/import text files, which provides
me with a crude text editor until I see if "mg" can be
weaned off being Unix-dependent, or I write my own
micro-emacs from scratch.

So the race is on for an 80386 a.out assembler,
archiver and linker.

When I'm on Mars another thing I will have to do is
write an 8086 huge memory model with 32-bit ints
version of SubC for my boot loader. SubC currently
requires short/int/long/pointer to all be the same
size effectively, I think.

BFN. Paul.

[Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson]

On 2/15/2022 9:42 AM, muta...@gmail.com wrote:
> I think I now have my future mapped out.

[snip]

>
> So the race is on for an 80386 a.out assembler,
> archiver and linker.

If you haven't come across it yet, there's a freely
available textbook on the subject here:

http://www.davidsalomon.name/assem.advertis/AssemAd.html

I am going through the book myself, and doing the programming
projects.

> When I'm on Mars another thing I will have to do is
> write an 8086 huge memory model with 32-bit ints
> version of SubC for my boot loader. SubC currently
> requires short/int/long/pointer to all be the same
> size effectively, I think.
>
> BFN. Paul.

Good luck,
--
Johann | email: invalid -> com | www.myrkraverk.com/blog/
I'm not from the Internet, I just work there. | twitter: @myrkraverk

[muta...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, February 16, 2022 at 2:55:08 AM UTC+11, Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson wrote:

> > So the race is on for an 80386 a.out assembler,
> > archiver and linker.

> If you haven't come across it yet, there's a freely
> available textbook on the subject here:

Thanks! I have downloaded it and started reading it.
Looks exactly what I need. As opposed to a textbook
explaining how to program in 80386 assembler.

BFN. Paul.

[muta...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, February 15, 2022 at 8:42:10 PM UTC+11, muta...@gmail.com wrote:

> So the race is on for an 80386 a.out assembler,
> archiver and linker.

The race has now been sufficiently completed.

Someone in Slovakia volunteered to write the assembler.
Someone in Mexico volunteered to write the archiver.
Someone in Italy volunteered to write the linker.

All available from http://pdos.org

And thus begins a new era of what the public actually owns.

BFN. Paul.

[Joe Monk]

>
> And thus begins a new era of what the public actually owns.
>
> BFN. Paul.

The "public" doesnt own "public domain" software, which is the whole point.

Joe

[muta...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, March 17, 2022 at 4:40:05 AM UTC+11, Joe Monk wrote:

> > And thus begins a new era of what the public actually owns.

> The "public" doesnt own "public domain" software, which is the whole point.

It is certainly not "unowned" in the sense that the first
person who finds it can pick it up and claim ownership
of it.

There is existing ownership - the public.

Although this is presumably a semantic debate. I don't care
if you want to say Hamlet is unowned rather than owned by
the public.

BFN. Paul.

[Joe Monk]

> It is certainly not "unowned" in the sense that the first
> person who finds it can pick it up and claim ownership
> of it.

"Public-domain software is software that has been placed in the public domain: in other words, software for which there is absolutely no ownership such as copyright, trademark, or patent. Software in the public domain can be modified, distributed, or sold even without any attribution by anyone; this is unlike the common case of software under exclusive copyright, where software licenses grant limited usage rights."

Joe

[muta...@gmail.com]

No individual or other subset of the public owns it.

The public as a whole can do what they want with it
because they effectively, as a whole, own it.

Semantic debate though. What would be the difference
between public ownership and no ownership?

BFN. Paul.

[Joe Monk]

> Semantic debate though. What would be the difference
> between public ownership and no ownership?

Well for example, government buildings are publicly owned.

Joe

[Joe Monk]

> Well for example, government buildings are publicly owned.
>
> Joe

And so, I cant do anything I want with a government building.

Since there is no ownership of public domain software, then I can do anything want with it/to it.

Joe

[muta...@gmail.com]

Work produced by the Australian government is copyrighted
by "the crown". That is the equivalent of government buildings.
They are owned by a subset of the public. An entity called
"the (Australian/American) government".

Public domain software is not owned by a government. It
is owned by the public in its entirety, worldwide.

But again, if you want to say "unowned" instead of "owned
by the globe", that's fine. I don't actually understand any
difference between those two concepts.

With the exception that "unowned" implies that someone
might be able to pick it up and claim ownership under the
principle "finders keepers, losers weepers".

BFN. Paul.

[muta...@gmail.com]

I have now documented and packaged PDOS/386 as a pure
public domain hard disk image, just 40 MB of which only
9 MB is populated. Search for "University Challenge" at
http://pdos.org

BFN. Paul.