Subject: Re: gnu-win32 licensing terms.
From: [email-masked] (Jim Pick)

21 Jul 1997 15:08:41 -0700
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Shaya Potter wrote:
> It'd be licensed
> under the Cygnus License or the GPL at the users choice.  Some users
> would be forced to use the GPL, but that would still enable the license
> to be considered "non-discriminatory".

Here's what Cygnus said about putting their code under the GPL in beta 17:

| The Cygwin32 API library found in the winsup subdirectory of the
| source code is now also covered by the GNU GPL.  Since by default all
| executables link against this library, programs compiled by the beta
| 17 tools will also have to be free software distributed under the GPL
| with source code available to all.

Many people familiar with the issues did not agree with the last 
sentence there.  Under some people's interpretations of the GPL (not 
RMS though), if the code is dynamically linked - then the executable
programs don't have to be GPL'd.  It could be argued that cygwin32 is 
providing a standard "POSIX" interface - so they can't prevent people 
from dynamically linking against it.  Remember, Linux is GPL'd, but 
using proprietary applications with it is OK.

(crt0.a gets statically linked - I wonder if using the old one
from Beta 16 would get around the GPL issue?)

Obviously, Cygnus does not agree.  My guess is that because 
this is a fuzzy issue - the GPL is no longer suitable from Cygnus's
perspective.

Cheers,

 - Jim

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