Mail Archives: djgpp/2000/10/10/19:30:15
> This has me a bit worried: You mentioned that CWSDPMI r5 can be
> linked into an application. Will this have the same viral effect
> that cygwin.dll has (any app built with CWSDPMI r5 must be GPL'd)?
> Or will there be a libstdcxx-style exception?
First, any application which distributes the CWSDPMI r5 binaries is
not required to distribute source - at worse just a pointer to source
(and this is frequently relaxed for commercial people who find that
impossible for some reason and ask nicely). The application itself
is not GPLed.
With the new addition of a CWSDPMI embedded stub:
Linked in is the wrong term - it's built into the stub which can be
built separately and upgraded separately from the application. The
stub copyright is very lenient - it say use for any purpose as long
as the copyright is intact. CWSDPMI built into that stub has the
same terms as the other binaries. Note: this does prevent compressing
the stub and/or CWSDPMI since copyrights are removed/obscured.
The goal here is not to require GPLing commercial products or even
to make their life difficult - but to make sure if some bug is
found in the stub or CWSDPMI that you can fix/upgrade your commercial
application parts that are free without paying them any money.
> >and tools needed to rebuild the application with the updated code.
>
> Wouldn't redistributing Borland C++ be copyright infringement?
> Or is there some other way to build CWSDPMI?
When I say tools I don't mean BCC - but things like either EXE2COFF,
or the makefile, or whatever. The above statement's a bad way to
put it - it was a quick news response not a legal one.
Let's put it this way - I'm very reasonable, and not a single
request for CWSDPMI redistribution has be denied due to unreasonable
terms in the last 5 years. It's even built into the ROM of some
embedded systems.
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