From: Bill_Mann AT praxisint DOT com (Bill Mann/US/Praxis) Subject: Re: Cygnus Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97 12 Feb 1997 13:48:02 -0800 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <9702121907.AA1916.cygnus.gnu-win32@smtp-notes-gw.praxisint.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain Original-To: Shankar Unni Original-Cc: Jeremy Allison , garp , sos , gnu-win32 , jra , noer Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Shankar, in the sea of noise concerning the Cygwin32 Press Release, it's refreshing to find someone who understands the issues, and with whom I can wholeheartedly agree. In my mind, this announcement reduces the Cygwin project from a great hope for a standard UNIX-like environment for NT, to 'just' another commercial porting kit, plus a problematic port of the FSF tool suite. Looking just at the tool suite port, the lack of full support for the native MS file naming conventions is a serious problem. For the Cygwin file naming approach to be acceptable at a particular site, it would have to be adopted for all commonly-used programs, so that the MS file naming conventions could be ignored. That requires linking non-FSF programs with the Cygnus ddl. As long as linking arbitrary programs with cygwin32.ddl requires a special license from Cygnus, it will not become popular (at any price, due to the paperwork). With no hope of wide-spread popularity, even early-adopters who are willing to pay will be forced to consider whether taking the Cygwin approach will make selling their products significantly more difficult. To: jra @ cygnus.com (Jeremy Allison) @ SMTP cc: garp @ opustel.com @ SMTP, sos @ prospect.com.ru @ SMTP, gnu-win32 @ cygnus.com @ SMTP, jra @ cygnus.com @ SMTP, noer @ cygnus.com @ SMTP (bcc: Bill Mann/US/Praxis) From: shankar @ chromatic.com (Shankar Unni) @ SMTP Date: 02/11/97 09:44:41 AM Subject: Re: Cygnus Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97 Jeremy Allison said: > (1). Buy a license from Cygnus for Cygwin32 so that > you can ship the Cygwin32 code not under the GPL. > > or : > > (2). Your software comes under the terms of the GPL. Hmm. This gives me a *really* bad feeling.. If you had put things under the *L*GPL, that's an entirely different matter. Some of us are not at liberty to release sources, because they are not ours to release. And if we have to *buy* Cygwin32 just in order to be able to fulfil our source licensing agreements, we are left with the choice of paying for Cygwin32 or paying for *&@#$soft VC++. We already have a site license for the latter, so the answer for us becomes sort of obvious.. GNU has always been a dicey issue with company lawyers who are afraid of potential lawsuits (however unjustified), so they'll come down hard on any attempt to use GNU unless there's a compelling economic and technical advantage to using it over *@#&$soft. Which there isn't any more, under the above terms.. If this is under *L*GPL, the answer is quite different, since the tradeoffs are somewhat more palatable. My feeling is that changing your terms to putting cygwin32 under the LGPL would bring you many more commercial customers, and you will benefit from this arrangement, too (I'm sure we'd have to make many fixes to cygwin32 on our own, and we would naturally be releasing them back to the community at large). Please reconsider your licensing plans - you could be writing a poison pill into your product with these terms.. -- Shankar Unni shankar AT chromatic DOT com Chromatic Research (408) 752-9488 - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help". - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".