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Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 16:06:39 +0100
From: Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
To: "'cygwin AT cygwin DOT com'" <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: Distributing cygwin packages
Message-ID: <20030123150639.GW29236@cygbert.vinschen.de>
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References: <7B4F465444F8D51184B500065B38175087694D AT mshyd1 DOT hyd DOT deshaw DOT com>
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On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 06:03:09PM +0530, Javvaji, Ramareddy wrote:
>  I have a few questions regarding distribution of cygwin packages with an
> application.
> 
> question 1: I am using cygwin utilities (ash,bash,make,awk,sed,cygpath
> .....) for building our application during build time. 
> Now I want to distribute our application to clients and for the application
> to run, clients should have basic cygwin
> installation.Can we distribute basic cygwin packages
> (ash,bash,inetutils,cygutils....)along with our executable?
> if  not what are the terms and conditions that i have to follow for
> distribution?

According to the GPL, if you distribute these tools and the Cygwin DLL
itself, you have to distribute the source code archives of the tools
and the Cygwin DLL.  Your customer has the legal right to get the source
code from you to be able to rebuild everything from scratch.

> question 2: Is it necessary to distribute my application source code ( along
> with cygwin's source code) if  i distribute my application with cygwin
> packages?

It depends. 

If your application is not linked against the Cygwin DLL (which means, it
is not an application which needs the Cygwin DLL installed to run), your
applications source code does not fall under the GPL licensing, so you can
keep it propriatary. 

If your application is linked against the Cygwin DLL (so it needs cygwin1.dll
in $PATH), your application is automatically GPL'd, too.  So you'd have to
give the source code of your application to the customer as well.

Red Hat sells a special Cygwin License for customers who are unable to
provide their application in open source code form.  For more information,
please see: http://cygwin.com/licensing.html.

> question 3: Regarding XFree XServer, Can I distribute XFree packages along
> with our application?

Same terms as under Q1, AFAIK.

Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Developer                                mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat, Inc.

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