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Sender: cygwin-owner@sourceware.cygnus.com
Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 15:44:56 -0400
Message-Id: <200005021944.PAA22336@envy.delorie.com>
From: DJ Delorie <dj@delorie.com>
To: KendallB@scitechsoft.com
CC: cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com
In-reply-to: <200005021235404.SM00160@KENDALLB>
Subject: Re: Things you can do with Cygwin
References: <390F1363.A145F514@earthlink.net> (message from Charles Hixson on	Tue, 02 May 2000 10:41:55 -0700) <200005021235404.SM00160@KENDALLB>


> Then again if you wanted to be more legal, stick the Cygwin stuff 
> into a server program and talk to it only via RPC or sockets instead 
> of direct dynamic linking.

The GPL doesn't talk about programs, it talks about "works".  It
doesn't matter how the two parts communicate.  The legal definition of
"works", I've been told, is pretty clear, so it would be easy for the
court to decide if your tricks were a violation or not, if it ever
came down to that.

My rule is that if you split it up for the purposes of avoiding the
GPL, you probably aren't avoiding it.

> violate the GPL, but then if that was the case you would never be 
> able to run proprietry programs under Linux because GNOME is GPL as 
> is the Linux kernel.

The linux kernel (or libc, I forget which) has an exception in its
copyright that specifically allows this.  It's not a side-effect of
the GPL.

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