Subject: Re: Cygnus Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97
From: [email-masked] (Paul Shirley)

10 Feb 1997 18:55:37 -0800
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Distribution: cygnus
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In message <[email-masked]>, Jim Balter <[email-masked]>
writes
>> Unfortunently what they are
>> saying is only they can make money from this effort.

No. What they are saying is you can make money under the LGPL licence
terms *or* pay them some money for normal commercial terms (ie no
source/object distribution required)

>The software is free, so they can say it but it isn't so.
>Cygnus can make money off of support, as they have always done
>(see their motto); you can too, and they can't stop you.  But if they
>think they can make money off of licenses for cygwin.dll, they are
>dreaming (I won't even comment about the claims about "most
>complete", "true compatibility", and "POSIX" in that press release,
>except that the latter opens them up to a lawsuit if they haven't been
>POSIX-certified).  They have already given the code away under the GPL.

Unless Cygnus have assigned the copyright to the FSF they can do
anything they like with cygwin.dll. The (L)GPL prevents them
retractively withdrawing GPL rights from a specific distribution. It
*does not prevent another distribution under a different licence* by the
copyright holders. Remember, the copyright holders don't need to be
licenced to use or distribute their own code.

It is fair to say that only people who need the Unix/gcc compatibility
are likely to find the commercial licence a viable option to VC, but
thats a whole different discussion.

-- 
Paul Shirley
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