Re: Bundling cygrunsrv with stand-alone projects

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu>]

On Thu, 14 Oct 2004, Corinna Vinschen wrote:

> On Oct 14 10:16, Soeren Nils Kuklau wrote:
> > we're working on a cross-platform server daemon which on Windows gets
> > compiled through Cygwin. To make installation convenient for Windows
> > users, we would like to bundle `cygwin1.dll' and the necessary files for
> > `cygrunsrv' with our Windows port. Before we try and implement that on
>
> Why?  You know that you create a couple of problems for users who already
> have installed Cygwin on their machines?
> [snip]
>
> > our side, however, we would like to know about the licensing implications.
> >
> > The project is `non-commercial' (as in 1) our primary purpose isn't to
> > make big bucks off it and 2) it is available for download at no cost)
> > and `open-source' (as in there's an issue tracker, and we will probably
> > allow anonymous SVN access to the source as the project becomes more
> > stable), but not under a GPL-compatible license.
>
> The secret word is "GPL".  It doesn't matter if you want to make money
> with it as long as you release your source code under an Open-Source
> compliant license according to the following definition:
>
>   http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.html
>
> If your software doesn't meet these criterias, you will have to buy
> a buy-out license from Red Hat, see http://cygwin.com/licensing.html

Hmm, I may be opening a can of worms here, but doesn't GPL allow bundling
GPL'd binaries with other binaries that aren't GPL-compatible (or even
open-sourced) as long as they aren't linked together?  At least, that's
what the "mere aggregation" clause covers -- see
<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndNonfreeOnSameMachine>
(<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation>) and
<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem>.

> Please note that when you're distributing binary versions of Cygwin and
> cygrunsrv, you also have to provide the sources from which the Cygwin
> and cygrunsrv versions have been built to comply with the GPL.  You must
> not rely on Red Hat keeping the sources of these versions for you.

Yes.  The GPL FAQ is a good read in any case -- perhaps the first message
on this list should've pointed people to it...
	Igor
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