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

12 Feb 1997 00:17:42 -0800
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The term "commercial" should really be avoided when dealing with free
software licenses (especially GPL and LGPL) because it tends to imply that
one needs a different license in order to make money.  This is untrue; any
of you can take the cygwin32 source, put it on a CD, sell it for $100,000;
and you will not be in any violation of the license.

The issue here is proprietary programs.  There are still many companies out
there that consider their source code the family jewels; thus they have
highly restrictive licenses.  Cygnus is essentially saying that they will
provide a company with a proprietary license of cygwin32 for a fee; they can
do that if they are the copyright owners of the source code, because as the
owners they can license it any way that they please.

I put the Windows32 API Library under the LGPL because it at least allows
coexistence with proprietary programs; meaning a proprietary program can
utilize the library without having to release its proprietary source code as
long as it meets some requirements.  However the requirements tend to be in
conflict with your standard proprietary license.  For example, most licenses
say that you cannot reverse engineer the program while the LGPL states that
you cannot disallow reverse engineering, so there is a conflict.  So in the
case of the Windows32 API Library, Cygnus would have to get a license from
me(or from FSF) if they wish to provide it under a proprietary license.

Anyways, I think you would find that the companies who are interested in
cygwin32 (at least the ones I work with) provide large mission critical
applications to their own organization or to a small set of clients.  They
aren't producing mass market products, so the licensing issues are less of a
concern.

Scott

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