Mail Archives: cygwin/1997/02/15/23:46:10
Ok, having finally managed to get clear in my own mind, thanks to the
helpful clarifying posts of the Cygnus engineers:
* The library will be released free of charge to individuals who publish
their code under the GPL terms (e.g. making the source code available to
those who desire it). NO financial obligation whatsoever.
* For those who wish to hoard the source and still make money off their
program, a financial obligation does exist; the fee paid gives you a
different license for the CYGWIN.DLL library.
* The above terms ONLY apply to the cygwin.dll library. GCC, GDB, and
all the other ported utils are usable freely. It's only when the
produced code is linked with cygwin.dll (the proprietary support library)
that the license becomes an issue.
With all the confusion going around, I thought I'd try to summarize what
the situation seems to be so as maybe to alleviate some confusion. I
know I was very unclaear on exactly how licensing was being applied to
the kit, and I'm familiar with the GPL and LGPL.
Additionally... I suspect most of us are using this because we're used to
the gcc environment. Which probably means used to UNIX stuff. Now this
may not be true for everyone, but most things I write for UNIX I release
the source code to. It's far easier than trying to find a SunOS box to
compile on, a Linux box to compile on, an HPUX box to compile on, an
Irix box to compile on, an Ultrix box to compile on, etc etc to make all
the binaries. Plus, it's nice to see other people adapt your code to
situations you hadn't thought of - as long as they still give you credit.
The only time this should become a concern is for commercial development
when you want to take the easy route and link with cygwin.dll to create a
program. Then, yes, it's like purchasing any other library (such as a 3D
library or a special advanced networking library) which you link in.
There are plenty of DLLs available commercially for use with Windows
development.
Use of cygwin.dll is not NECESSARY. There are alternatives such as
mingw32; you retain the development environment, but don't need the
cygwin.dll library to link with. Something such as that is probably a
better solution for commercial development under Windows anyway.
Now that things have been clarified, I can say that Cygnus has probably
thought this out very carefully. It's not gcc/gdb/bash/tar and all the
other GNU tools we're used to that are being sold; those remain free. It
is not necessary to link with the Cygwin library; any more than it's
necessary to link with some of the Win32 DLLs (such as MFC). Yes, such
libraries make the work of development easier, but they are not REQUIRED.
My ONLY complaint is that I think the license fee that was quoted on this
list ($10,000 for 1-5 user license) is a _tad_ ridiculous, if accurate.
THAT is where Cygnus needs to do some work. :)
+---[ Loki ]------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| Jeremy Blackman | NeonMuck coder/maintainer - Multimedia MU*! |
| loki AT maison-otaku DOT net | http://www.maison-otaku.net/neon |
+-----------------------+---------------------------------------------------+
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