From: Stan Shebs Subject: Re: Cygnus Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97 11 Feb 1997 15:32:50 -0800 Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: References: <01BC1757 DOT 59ED0370 AT gater DOT krystalbank DOT msk DOT ru> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 garp AT opustel DOT com (Keith Gary Boyce ) writes: > Will someone from cygnus define commercial. Does that mean if you say > something like "If you like send $x to y" that's fine and you don't need a > licence. And if you produce binarys and say something like this does that > mean you are also obligated to share source code for free. Jeremy had it pretty accurate, but "commercial" is not entirely relevant. Technically, if you use the GPLed library in a freeware app, then you would have to make the app's sources available upon request to anyone you gave the binary to (note: not to just anyone, just those that *you* gave it to). In practice, I would expect that we would not bother to pursue any such cases - not much to be gained by it. However, I personally would like to encourage freeware authors to make their sources available; there is an unfortunate tendency in the PC and Mac world to distribute binaries and hoard sources, which makes it much less likely that programmers can learn from each other. Stan Shebs Cygnus Support shebs AT cygnus DOT com