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Glibc Is Finally Free Software

Posted by timothy on from the after-the-fact dept.

WebMink writes "Despite the fervour of some, the dark secret of every GNU/Linux distribution is that, until August 18 this year, it depended on software that was under a non-Free license — incompatible with the Open Source Definition and non-Free according to Debian and the FSF. A long tale of tenacity and software archeology has finally led to that software appearing under the 3-clause BSD license — ironically, at the behest of an Oracle VP. The result is that glibc, portmap and NFS are no longer tainted."

2 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Re:that's great now fix NFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can't fucking upload shit to my NAS without my desktop freezing

    A computer is not a toilet.
    Try uploading files instead.

  2. Year of the Linux desktop! by Manip · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now that Glibc is free we can finally have the year of the Linux desktop we've been waiting for since 2001. I know tons of my friends who would always say "I wanted to use Linux but Glibc isn't free!"

    Now with that glaring hole in Linux's offering solved we can move on continuing to ignore the terrible User Experience.