Re: GPLv3

[Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com>]

On Jul  2 11:28, Andrew Schulman wrote:
> > In the meantime, treat the http://cygwin.com/licensing.html page as
> > state of the art, especially the open source permission clause.
> 
> Thanks.

Ok, I got legal advice now.

Linking a GPLv3 application against a GPLv2-only library is not ok
because this violates the v2-only license of the library.  It does not
violate the license of the v3 application.  This means, the tar package
in the Cygwin distro is not ok (but read on) because it violates
Cygwin's license.  There's no problem from the tar side, however.

There are no short-term plans to change the license of Cygwin, rather we
just wait until the OSI certifies the GPLv3 as open source license
according to the definitions.  As Brian already noted, as soon as the
OSI certifies the GPLv3, the exemption clause from
http://cygwin.com/licensing.html will also cover GPLv3'ed packages.

In the meantime, as long as the GPLv3 is not OSI certified (which
shouldn't take long), Red Hat will not enforce the GPLv2-only state of
Cygwin on the back of GPLv3 packages.  So, tar 1.18 can stay in the
distro if Eric trusts Red Hat not to sue him.  The same applies to
every other maintainer of every other package which goes v3.

Actually, cpio goes GPLv3 as well
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-cpio/2007-06/msg00016.html and as
the Cygwin cpio maintainer I will provide the cpio 2.9 release under
GPLv3 at any rate since, for some reason, I trust myself not to enforce
the GPLv2 on my cpio package ;)

I hope that clears the situation sufficiently.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Project Co-Leader          cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat