Subject: Re: cygwin and Postgres
From: Chris Faylor <[email-masked]>
To: Jason Zions <[email-masked]>
Cc: "'Peter Mount'" <[email-masked]>, "'Christopher Faylor'" <[email-masked]>, "Peimer, Hylton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 11:42:27 -0400

On Tue, Jun 22, 1999 at 02:28:23PM -0700, Jason Zions wrote:
>> Are you sure about this?
>
>Yes, he's sure about this.
>
>>Using GPLed software to compile a commercial product doesn't imply that
>>the final product needs to be under the GPL.  Infact the new versions
>>of the GPL & LGPL have new clauses to try to get round this confusion.
>
>It's not just a matter of using GPL'd software to build the commercial
>product.  The cygwin runtime support code is GPL'd.  Software which
>uses that code at run-time must also be GPL'd.  This is the principal
>difference between the LGPL and the GPL.  Suppose the runtime is a
>shared library.  If it's covered by the GPL, a user of that library is
>"infected" with the GPL as well.  If it's covered instead by the LGPL,
>the user of the library is *not* infected.

This is generally true but we have changed the license recently.  The
new license will be in B21.  The change allows you to link libcygwin.a
into your software and redistribute it as long as *your* software sources
are made freely available.  It does not allow you to use libcygwin.a for
proprietary commercial software.  For that you need to contact Cygnus for
a commercial license.

I've included the CYGWIN_LICENSE file from recent snapshots below.

cgf

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but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
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You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
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			*** NOTE ***

In accordance with section 10 of the GPL, Cygnus permits programs whose
sources are distributed under a license that complies with the Open
Source(tm) definition to be linked with libcygwin.a without libcygwin.a
itself causing the resulting program to be covered by the GNU GPL.

This means that you can port an Open Source(tm) application to cygwin,
and distribute that executable as if it didn't include a copy of
libcygwin.a linked into it.  Note that this does not apply to the cygwin
DLL itself.  If you distribute a (possibly modified) version of the DLL
you must adhere to the terms of the GPL, i.e., you must provide sources
for the cygwin DLL.

See http://www.opensource.org/osd.html for the precise Open Source
Definition referenced above.

If you have questions about any of the above or would like to arrange
for other licensing terms, please contact Cygnus using the information
given below:

     Cygnus Solutions
     1325 Chesapeake Terrace
     Sunnyvale, CA 94089
     USA

     +1 408 542 9600
     hotline: +1 408 542 9601
     email: [email-masked]'
     fax: +1 408 542 9699

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