Subject: Re: gnu-win32 licensing terms.
From: [email-masked]

22 Jul 1997 12:41:36 -0700
Approved: [email-masked]
Distribution: cygnus
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
References: <[email-masked]>
Original-To: [email-masked]
Original-CC: [email-masked]
Original-Sender: [email-masked]

>| 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.

I'm not aware of anybody who thinks that linking against a GPL dynamic
library causes the program to come under the GPL.

However, an NT DLL is not the same as a Unix dynamic library.  You
don't link against the DLL.  Instead, you link against a library
(automatically generated by dlltool) which contains calls to the DLL.
Since that automatically generated library was put under the GPL, that
required all programs that were linked against it to follow the GPL
restrictions.

Ian
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