Mail Archives: cygwin/1999/07/16/16:22:56
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PositivePi AT aol DOT com [mailto:PositivePi AT aol DOT com]
> Sent: Friday, July 16, 1999 4:06 PM
> To: cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
> Subject: -mwindows copyright?
>
> I'm using the -mno-cygwin and -mwindows options to compile
> my program. I'm also binding to several other windows libs
> such as -lwsock32. I want to distribute my programs--as well
> as source--entirely public domain. The copyright on all of
> the mingw libraries seems to be public domain, so I'm ok
> there. But looking at the windows libraries in the source,
> some of them have copyrights such as winsup/sysdef/wsock32.def:
> --snip--
> ; Exports for WSOCK32 DLL
> ;
> ; Copyright (C) 1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> ;
> ; Author: Scott Christley <scottc AT net-community DOT com>
> ; Date: 1996
> ;
> ; This file is part of the Windows32 API Library.
> ;
> ; This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
> ; modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public
> ; License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
> ; version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
> --snip--
> Does this mean that if I use -mwindows/-lwsock32 I either
> have to distribute my program under GNU, or write my own .def's for
> windows API? (which I imagine would be a minor pain)
Er, Public Domain explicitly means _no_ copyright.
Why is distributing under the GNU liscense a problem? The trouble
with releasing software into the public domain is that anyone is
free to pick it up, make their own changes, copyright it, and _sell_
it as their own. The GNU copyleft is designed to prevent that sort
of thing.
______
Dennis
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