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Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 15:53:35 -0400
Message-Id: <200005021953.PAA22398@envy.delorie.com>
From: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
To: nhv AT cape DOT com
CC: cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
In-reply-to: <000801bfb46c$bdd231c0$2137ba8c@nhv>
Subject: Re: Things you can do with Cygwin
References:  <000801bfb46c$bdd231c0$2137ba8c AT nhv>


> I would venture that legally you could link against a propriatary
> DLL that you distributed separately ( and perhaps sold )
> and still use Cygwin for the rest of the application.

This is a grey area.  If your application ran properly without those
proprietary dlls, and the API that is used to talk to those dlls is
public, and other companies also produced dlls that could be used with
your application, I'd probably agree that it's OK.  If your
application didn't work without those DLLs and there were no other
DLLs or applications that used that interface, I'd say it was still
one work, and the GPL would apply to both components.

The user should be able to start from source, and rebuild the "whole
thing", without having to rely on binary modules to get a functioning
application.

Remember, the GPL talks about "works", not programs.  You have to know
if you have created one work that happens to be composed of more than
one file/program/whatever, or if you have really created two
independent works that just happen to be able to be used together, but
could be used separately.  Two programs that talk over TCP/IP between
two computers in different countries may still be only one work,
depending on how co-dependent they are.

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