Subject: Summary of GPL issues.
From: [email-masked] (Jeremy Blackman)

15 Feb 1997 23:46:10 -0800
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Ok, having finally managed to get clear in my own mind, thanks to the 
helpful clarifying posts of the Cygnus engineers:

* The library will be released free of charge to individuals who publish 
their code under the GPL terms (e.g. making the source code available to 
those who desire it).  NO financial obligation whatsoever.

* For those who wish to hoard the source and still make money off their 
program, a financial obligation does exist; the fee paid gives you a 
different license for the CYGWIN.DLL library.

* The above terms ONLY apply to the cygwin.dll library.  GCC, GDB, and 
all the other ported utils are usable freely.  It's only when the 
produced code is linked with cygwin.dll (the proprietary support library) 
that the license becomes an issue.

With all the confusion going around, I thought I'd try to summarize what 
the situation seems to be so as maybe to alleviate some confusion.  I 
know I was very unclaear on exactly how licensing was being applied to 
the kit, and I'm familiar with the GPL and LGPL.

Additionally... I suspect most of us are using this because we're used to 
the gcc environment.  Which probably means used to UNIX stuff.  Now this 
may not be true for everyone, but most things I write for UNIX I release 
the source code to.  It's far easier than trying to find a SunOS box to 
compile on, a Linux box to compile on, an HPUX box to compile on, an 
Irix box to compile on, an Ultrix box to compile on, etc etc to make all 
the binaries.  Plus, it's nice to see other people adapt your code to 
situations you hadn't thought of - as long as they still give you credit.

The only time this should become a concern is for commercial development 
when you want to take the easy route and link with cygwin.dll to create a 
program.  Then, yes, it's like purchasing any other library (such as a 3D 
library or a special advanced networking library) which you link in.  
There are plenty of DLLs available commercially for use with Windows 
development.

Use of cygwin.dll is not NECESSARY.  There are alternatives such as 
mingw32; you retain the development environment, but don't need the 
cygwin.dll library to link with.  Something such as that is probably a 
better solution for commercial development under Windows anyway.

Now that things have been clarified, I can say that Cygnus has probably 
thought this out very carefully.  It's not gcc/gdb/bash/tar and all the 
other GNU tools we're used to that are being sold; those remain free.  It 
is not necessary to link with the Cygwin library; any more than it's 
necessary to link with some of the Win32 DLLs (such as MFC).  Yes, such 
libraries make the work of development easier, but they are not REQUIRED.

My ONLY complaint is that I think the license fee that was quoted on this 
list ($10,000 for 1-5 user license) is a _tad_ ridiculous, if accurate.  
THAT is where Cygnus needs to do some work. :)

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

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