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Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:58:24 -0700
From: David Rothenberger <daveroth@acm.org>
Subject: Re: possible DLL license violations
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Note-from-DJ: This may be spam

On 4/22/2005 10:56 AM, David Rothenberger wrote:
> On 4/22/2005 8:52 AM, David Rothenberger wrote:
> 
>> I ran across a tool called "Trader's Little Helper" at [url removed
>> because it trips the cygwin spam filter] that includes the
>> cygwin1.dll, but doesn't provide source code. Even worse, it puts
>> cygwin1.dll in C:\WINDOWS!
> 
> 
> I succeeded in contacting the author of this tool this morning and I 
> informed him of the problems and directed him to the cygwin site for 
> more information. I didn't attempt to contact any of the authors of the 
> other packages.
> 

The author of Trader's Little Helper responded to me. He basically said 
the following:

1. He doesn't think shorten or shntool are violating the GPL because 
they have been around for years.
2. He doesn't think he's violating the GPL because he's not linking to 
the cygwin DLL nor modifying it.

IANAL, but I think that his second point is correct. I still think 
shorten and shntool are violating the GPL because they *are* linking to 
the DLL; it doesn't really matter that it hasn't been caught for years - 
there is no statue of limitations in the GPL.

So, to me it seems that only shorten and shntool are violating the GPL 
and not TLH, dBpowerAMP, nor the Nero SHN plugin.

-- 
David Rothenberger                spammer? -> spam@daveroth.dyndns.org
GPG/PGP: 0x7F67E734, C233 365A 25EF 2C5F C8E1 43DF B44F BA26 7F67 E734

The three laws of thermodynamics:
	(1) You can't get anything without working for it.
	(2) The most you can accomplish by working is to break even.
	(3) You can only break even at absolute zero.


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