Subject: Re: Licensing Issues?
From: "David A. Cobb" <[email-masked]>
To: Charles Wilson <[email-masked]>
Cc: Cygwin Library General Discussion <[email-masked]>, NewLib Discussion <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 20:25:51 -0400

Charles Wilson wrote:
> David A. Cobb wrote:
> 
>> Would someone in the know please explain why there are licensing 
>> issues between GLibC and Newlib?  Are they not both GPL?
>>
> 
> Sigh.  this has been explained so many times I am surprised your search 
> of the archives did not reveal it.  You *did* search the archives, right?
> 
> Cygnus (now Red Hat) releases cygwin under two licenses: the GPL and a 
> proprietary license.  People who purchase cygwin under the proprietary 
> license are allowed to distribute cygwin-based binaries WITHOUT 
> distributing their source code.  (You may not like this arrangement, but 
> it's the way things are.  Besides, the proceeds pay Chris' and Corinna's 
> and others' salaries...)

Yes, I knew that much.

> 
> Anyway, ONLY the copyright owner of a particular work is allowed to 
> establish the license terms.  If you take GPL code that you do not own, 
> you can't change the license -- although the GPL gives you certain 
> redistribution rights.

OK, one cannot simply "borrow" (steal) from it even when it's open.

> 
> Since Red Hat needs to specify the license, they need to own the code. 
> They don't own the glibc code.  Therefore they can't use it (as part of 
> cygwin1.dll -- e.g. newlib)  [This also explains why everybody who 
> contributes to cgywin1.dll must sign over copyright to Red Hat].

And glibc is, I presume, owned by FSF.

> 
> --Chuck

Must one then observe "white room" conditions when developing, say, for 
a piece to go into newlib & cgywin1?  That is, carefully avoid knowing 
/anything/ about the glibc implementation?

To what extent may one legitimately learn from a free-speech program 
without actually extracting code?  This is very much like an old 
question about what, precisely, is copyrighted.  Once upon a time I knew 
the answer - the exact program text.  But that was before the new 
copyright laws and the days of software patents.

A library such as this must implement a very well-defined result; it 
would be pretty surprising if two implementations did not have a great 
deal in common.  Even short sequences, at least, of instructions are 
very likely in both.

-- 
David A. Cobb, Software Engineer, Public Access Advocate, All around 
nice guy.
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