Mail Archives: cygwin/2000/05/03/07:04:17
> Yes, but I think there is different works as soon as these can be
> used independently; obviously a proprietary work that can be used on
> CYGWIN, Linux, HPux, Solaris, etc is NOT a derived work of CYGWIN
> but a separate work (especially if it was FIRST available on other
> OSes, then ported on CYGWIN).
Once it's compiled with Cygwin, it's a derived work, because the
binaries are not independent. If you could run the same *binary* on
Linux, Solaris, HPUX, and Cygwin, that would be different. Or, if you
had a binary that would run just fine without cygwin1.dll but happened
to use it if it was there, that might be independent. But a binary
that relies on cygwin1 is not independent.
Plus, don't forget that part of cygwin is statically linked into your
program - even if you don't use cygwin1.dll (somehow), you still use
libcygwin.a, and that alone makes it GPL'd.
> In fact CYGWIN on WIN32 may be seen as yet another POSIX-compatible
> OS and it seems difficult to argue that some work that can be used
> on it is not a different work.
No, because *windows* isn't a POSIX-compatible OS, so cygwin is
clearly an added feature on such an OS, especially since you have to
obtain it from a third party, make special provisions for it (relative
to win32 programs), and link it into your program.
The POSIX subsystem doesn't count, because cygwin runs in the win32
subsystem, so cygwin programs have more functionality than posix
subsystem programs.
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