From: scottc AT net-community DOT com (Scott Christley) Subject: Re: Cygnus Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97 12 Feb 1997 00:17:42 -0800 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <199702111704.MAA03836.cygnus.gnu-win32@linus.net-community.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: scottc AT net-community DOT com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2 Original-To: gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Original-Cc: noer AT cygnus DOT com (Geoffrey Noer) Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com The term "commercial" should really be avoided when dealing with free software licenses (especially GPL and LGPL) because it tends to imply that one needs a different license in order to make money. This is untrue; any of you can take the cygwin32 source, put it on a CD, sell it for $100,000; and you will not be in any violation of the license. The issue here is proprietary programs. There are still many companies out there that consider their source code the family jewels; thus they have highly restrictive licenses. Cygnus is essentially saying that they will provide a company with a proprietary license of cygwin32 for a fee; they can do that if they are the copyright owners of the source code, because as the owners they can license it any way that they please. I put the Windows32 API Library under the LGPL because it at least allows coexistence with proprietary programs; meaning a proprietary program can utilize the library without having to release its proprietary source code as long as it meets some requirements. However the requirements tend to be in conflict with your standard proprietary license. For example, most licenses say that you cannot reverse engineer the program while the LGPL states that you cannot disallow reverse engineering, so there is a conflict. So in the case of the Windows32 API Library, Cygnus would have to get a license from me(or from FSF) if they wish to provide it under a proprietary license. Anyways, I think you would find that the companies who are interested in cygwin32 (at least the ones I work with) provide large mission critical applications to their own organization or to a small set of clients. They aren't producing mass market products, so the licensing issues are less of a concern. Scott - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".