From: grantl AT deerinet DOT nb DOT ca ("Grant Leslie") Subject: RE: Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97 17 Feb 1997 20:39:50 -0800 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Original-To: "GNU-WIN32" X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Priority: 3 X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet Mail 4.70.1160 Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com > A legal sidebar: > > I've read GPL and LGPL and it's hard to say what the legal > ramification are. It's too bad we can't all afford lawyers. > One thing I know, you can't distribute groff binaries as some > people have already done. Remember that all cygwin32 binaries > contain crt0, which is GPL. If you distribute it, you must > distribute it's source. I for one don't want to liable for > distributing all of cygwin32 source just to include a binary > with it's source. Remember GPL (instead of LGPL) causes as > much problem for _freeware_ code as is does for commercial. > (I suspect that you could distribute commercial binaries on > CD with cygwin32, if you included all cygwin32 source.) > I was under the impression that the sources had only need "be made availible" should someone want them..?? I can certainly tell people where I got the source, ( and did when asked ) or even make availible the exact ones I used. And also the sources for Cygwin32 is readily availible. Basically I would like to know if I should just pull off the binaries I have posted, or if I am required to place the sources on the same server to remain "legal"???? If I must include the sources for crt0 and cygwin.dll on the server, then I'm afraid the gnu-win32 directory must just be removed altogether :(. I am the administrator for the site and would truely hate place things of questionable legality on on my site!!! And posting just what I did ( since it created much more traffic than I expected ) is almost too much extra traffic for what is really just a personal "learning" hobby of my own... If ANYONE from Cygnus could comment on this I'd love to hear from them? I remember reading that the GNU-Win32 ( or whatever it's name ends up being ) tools etc.. would always be availible for free, however in a "beta" form without support beyond this mailing list. If this is the case, then just exactly what would be required to distribute binaries created with these "free" tools, assuming no charge was made for those binaries created? Would the "beta" have different licenses placed on it than the "commercial" version of them? As a "casual" user of these tools, that is someone who doesn't intend to make any profit from using this, I would really like to know what legal responsibilities I would have if I wanted to share what I create?? Since basically just anyone with net access could download the tools, I hope Cygnus has placed some sort of thought in this direction, or I may grudgingly have to remove all traces of it from my hard drive :-( - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".