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

13 Feb 1997 20:59:22 -0800
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All right; here's my question (as long as we're pestering the Cygnus folks).

What are the licensing terms exactly going to BE?  For the current stuff 
I'm porting using gnu-win32, they are all things I originally wrote for 
Linux (or SunOS, etc), and the source code is freely available anyway 
(since all the Windows-specific changes are in #ifdef blocks and are 
present in the most recent source release for the UNIX platform).  So no 
problems there.

But what if, at some point in the future, I wanted to write and release 
something shareware (since I prefer gcc over VC++, generally speaking.  I 
use VC++ enough at work, thanks).  While I understand that if I then did 
not wish to release the source code (which with a shareware program is 
fair enough), then I'd need to pay Cygnus a fee, what is still unclear is 
HOW MUCH this fee exactly would be.

If it's a flat fee of several thousand for a site license, obviously an 
independent programmer is not going to be able to afford it.  If it's a 
per-product fee, likely an independent programmer will not be able to pay 
that, either.  A lot of the current user base of Cygwin is just that; 
programmers working solo (or in small groups) outside of work on projects 
that interest them.  If the fees are appropriate to who is licensing them 
(e.g. a small group of three programmers is far less likely to be able to 
handle, say, a $10,000 site license than, for example, a large software 
company would), then I don't see too much problem with this policy.

Anyway, I'm just curious.  Doesn't affect my current cygwin project one 
way or the other, but it would be nice to know. :)

+---[ Loki ]------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| Jeremy Blackman       | NeonMuck coder/maintainer - Multimedia MU*!       |
| [email-masked] | http://www.maison-otaku.net/neon                  |
+-----------------------+---------------------------------------------------+

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