Re: [Bug-XBoard] WinBoard for JFW

[h.g. muller]

At 20:13 27-6-2009 -0700, Tim Mann wrote:
> ...
> I do remember testing it without the speech turned on and reproducing
> the bug where ICS support didn't work.  I think I even found the bug in
> the source code... but I thought I couldn't rebuild it with a fix, so I
> didn't try.  D'oh.

Actually it was difficul to rebuild with GCC, because apparently 4.0.2
was not yet compatible with this compiler. (Or the compiler has become
more pedantic since then.) I got several compile errors, and when I finally
fixed them the xecutable would crash when there was no winboard.ini
(very strange, the engine string "GNUChess\n" was readable, but when
a NULLCHAR terminator character was written into it, WB segfaulted,
like it was in write-protected memory.) And GCC apparently treated
enum-types as unsigned, so that the loop for selecting the initial
board size, (using bs >= 0) did not terminate under any conditions,
causing segfaulting as well.

But when I solved all that in the original 4.0.2., the JAWS version did
not need any additional patching to build. The whole interfacing with JAWS
is done throuh only a single routine, SayString(char *, boolean), which
is obtained dynamically from the DLL. Which was supplied, so I did not
need JAWS for testing if the reported problems occurred.


> jfwapi32.dll is something that was included with WinBoard for JFW when
> I got it from the JFW folks.  I assume they granted permission to
> redistribute this file, because they were freely distributing WinBoard
> for JFW from their web site.

OK, I guess the simplest way to go about this is to do what Eric suggests:
simply not include the DLL, as people using JAWS should have it.

> On the GPL issue, in general, DLL's are a bit of a fuzzy area.  A
> purist could try to argue that jfwapi32.dll gets "linked" with WinBoard
> and that linking GPL with non-free code is not OK.  However, this case
> doesn't bother me, and I think it would be silly for us to treat it as
> a GPL violation.

I agree, it is a very fuzzy area. I guess we are also using DLLs which are
windows components, like kernel32.dll, even statically linked. The jfwapi32.dll
is comparable in fuction to that; it simply provides extra functionality of the
OS, which we draw on. If that would be a violation, GPL'd software would be
pretty useless...

H.G.

>         --Tim