Mail Archives: cygwin/2005/01/27/07:14:50
On Jan 26 23:51, John Mellor wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-23-01 at 16:03 +0100, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> > You have two choices:
> >
> > - Comply with the GPL in one way or the other, which always means your
> > application is also GPLed and you have to open the source code to
> > your customer.
> >
> > - Or, you ask Red Hat for a special Cygwin License according to this
> > paragraph on http://cygwin.com/licensing.html:
> >
> > Red Hat sells a special Cygwin License for customers who are unable
> > to provide their application in open source code form. For more
> > information, please see: http://www.redhat.com/software/cygwin/,
> > or call +1-866-2REDHAT ext. 45300 (toll-free in the US)
>
> Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I read that incorrectly.
>
> I have no problem passing on the full source code to the Customer (after
> all, that's what they paid me to work on), but I can't pass it on to
> other parties as it contains some code fragments that implement their
> trade secrets, and doing so would violate the trade secrecy laws.
>
> So, am I safe if I give the Customer the source for an app that is
> linked against cygwin1.dll, but not also publish it to the whole world?
Yes. The GPL requires you to open the sources (of your application
*and* of Cygwin) to the audience. If the audience is only one customer,
then giving the sources to this one customer is fine.
But keep track that your customer doesn't release the application to
their customers. In that case, these customers inherit the natural right
to get the sources as well! If that's not an option, your customer will
have to fall back to purchasing a commercial Cygwin license.
One additional hint: The GPL requires that the audience is able to
rebuild the exact version of the application. This means, you must
provide the exact same source version from which you've build your
application to your customer. This rule applies to the Cygwin version
as well. If you're providing Cygwin 1.5.12 with your application, then
you have to provide also the sources of Cygwin 1.5.12. So it's always a
good idea to pull also the source package of Cygwin from the mirror
immediately, if you're providing a package which includes Cygwin.
Please let's move any further discussion to cygwin-licensing AT cygwin DOT com.
I've Cc'd my reply to that list.
Corinna
--
Corinna Vinschen Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Project Co-Leader mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat, Inc.
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