Subject: Re: Cygnus Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97
From: Stan Shebs <[email-masked]>

11 Feb 1997 19:57:23 -0800
Distribution: cygnus
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
References: <[email-masked]>
	<[email-masked]>
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[email-masked] (Jim Balter) writes:

> [...]  Cygnus apparently no longer
> shares the FSF philosophy towards free software. [...]

The real situation is more complicated than that.  Cygnus is not the
FSF, nor is the FSF part of Cygnus, and nor is Cygnus part of the FSF.
There have always been issues where Cygnus is at odds with the FSF.
We do highly confidential work for companies whose processors are
still being designed, we did a Mac port back when the FSF boycotted
Apple, we distribute a version of GDB with tcl/tk built in.  We've
been doing these kinds of things for a long time, often over the FSF's
explicit objections.

Cygnus and the FSF do share many views about free software, but the
FSF's goals are more purely promotion of the idea, while Cygnus' goals
are more to make money from the idea.  Both are valuable; the FSF
stands for something that inspires programmers and users, while Cygnus
acquires millions of dollars per year and puts it into actual GNU
development, much of it on unglamorous internal stuff that would never
get done otherwise.

							Stan Shebs
							Cygnus Support
							[email-masked]