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

13 Feb 1997 11:19:50 -0800
Distribution: cygnus
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
References: <[email-masked]> <[email-masked]>
	<[email-masked]>
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[email-masked] (Jim Balter) writes:

> Perhaps Geoff Noer should have pointed there instead of dropping the
> press release here.

Then the many people who don't read gnu.misc.discuss would complain
that we were keeping the members of this list informed about important
info.  Can't win sometimes!

> The problem though is that cygwin.dll is made up of code with all sorts
> of different copyrights, including code under the GPL (not LGPL)
> that does not belong to Cygnus.  Cygnus would have to purge their
> library of such code before they could put cygwin.dll under and
> restricted-distribution license.  Also, any code that they retain
> that still is under the LGPL, either owned by them or not, would not
> be subject to their licensing restrictions.

Code is already scrubbed.  If you have a specific example of GPLed
code in cygwin.dll not owned by Cygnus, we'll whack it out.

> I just spent half a day rewriting times.cc in winsup and fixing at
> least 6 bugs.  I am now in a quandary as to what to do with the result.
> If I post it publicly, I would do so under the GPL.  But then Cygnus
> could not incorporate the result into their library.

Without the assignment of copyright, we wouldn't take it anyway,
irrespective of license terms.  There are all kinds of cool additions
to GNU out in the world for which the authors would not or could not
assign their copyright, and none of those have ever been added to
FSF releases.  It's sad, but that's just the way things go sometimes.

> And if their
> library with a proprietary license suddenly shows up with these bugs
> fixed but the code looks a little different from mine, I may have
> grounds for a lawsuit.

Ya know, we *really* don't want to be handling two versions of library
code; the GPLed version is going to be functionally identical to the
licensed version, differing only in the copyright information at the
top of each file, and perhaps with a different release stamp.  You
should be able to disassemble the licensed version and compare to the
GPL version, and make sure that the evil Cygnus isn't sneaking your
patches into the code. 1/2 :-)

> I think that you have to decide up front what your policy is.
> Cygnus should have either put the library under the LGPL in the first
> place and treated it like any other non-proprietary code that they
> support, or they should have switched their strategy and developed
> a proprietary product.  Straddling the fence as they are doing is going
> to create confusion.  The issue isn't whether they are playing "fairly",
> but whether they have a viable and coherent strategy.

I'm sure that Peter Deutsch has to deal with a certain amount of
confusion regarding Ghostscript too, but the extra complexity allows
him to pay his bills, so it's worth it.  I will admit that we did
start out with the current strategy; the original situation was that
the library was purely for the purposes of supporting a Win32 port of
GNU tools, and the engineer was very sloppy about details like
licensing terms and functionality in times.cc; we've had to put quite
a bit of time into cleanup, and it's far from done.  (Anyone who's
nostalgic about, say, b8 doesn't know how fragile it was...)

Please keep in mind that the dual licensing plan only changes things
for one class of developers; those who want the Unix-like API *and*
who intend to distribute binaries only.  It does not affect pure Win32
developers using GCC to compile, it does not affect people doing cross
compilation, and it does not affect free software developers.

It actually seems a little hypocritical for a proprietary software
developer to complain that Cygnus is not handing them a bunch of code
that they can just incorporate and make a big profit with the result,
with no sort of contribution back to the free software community.
We're giving proprietary developers a simple choice; use the GPLed
library and be willing to make your software free, or buy out of the
GPL using the same sort of license that you have with your other
library vendors.

							Stan