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Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 16:42:36 +0100
From: Elfyn McBratney <elfyn AT emcb DOT co DOT uk>
X-X-Sender: elfyn AT ellixia
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
cc: Cary Lewis <clewis AT mobilecom DOT com>
Subject: Re: License question about Cygwin
In-Reply-To: <Pine.CYG.4.55.0307161635340.3852@ellixia>
Message-ID: <Pine.CYG.4.55.0307161641250.3852@ellixia>
References: <3E2D8043936AD611AF7D00508B5E9F4B48B482 AT server3 DOT mobilecom DOT com>
 <Pine DOT CYG DOT 4 DOT 55 DOT 0307161635340 DOT 3852 AT ellixia>
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
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On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Elfyn McBratney wrote:

> On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Cary Lewis wrote:
>
> > As the Cygwin.dll is licensed under GPL, any "Program" that links to it must
> > be released under GPL as well.
>
> Under section 10 of the GPL, if the "program" is OSD compatible then the
> "program" is not auto-GPL'd.
>
> > My question is, what if the "Program" also links to proprietary .dlls that
> > are authored by someone else. That source can not be published (I don't even
> > have access to it). Furthermore these .dlls are not freely available.
>
> Are these DLL's Cygwin DLL's ? i.e. not native Windows DLL's.
>
> > Does that mean that even if I publish all of my source code, I would still
> > be violating the GPL because I couldn't publish the source code to the
> > proprietary libraries.
>
> Yes.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer. I don't ever want to be a lawyer. I dislike
lawyers. For a definative answer seek advice from a lawyer.

-- 
Elfyn McBratney, EMCB  |  http://www.nongnu.org/wwwauth/
http://www.emcb.co.uk  |  http://www.emcb.co.uk/webauth/
elfyn AT emcb DOT co DOT uk       |  wwwauth-users AT nongnu DOT org


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