Re: Cygwin participation threshold

[Christopher Faylor <cgf@cygnus.com>]

On Thu, Feb 25, 1999 at 12:51:48AM +1100, Fergus Henderson wrote:
>On 23-Feb-1999, Christopher Faylor <cgf@cygnus.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 22, 1999, Carl Zmola wrote:
>> >
>> >The fact that a company is in charge of 
>> >coordinating the efforts has an effect.
>> >
>> >In the past the main reason I didn't even investigate contributing is :
>> >Because of the feeling that contributions are unwanted, and that someone
>> >else is making money of of my work.
>> >
>> >After a little investigation, I found that these wern't valid concerns, but
>> >they are a first line of resistance.  
>> 
>> It is interesting that you felt this way at first.  I wonder if the reason
>> has anything to do with the name "Cygwin" which sounds so similar to "Cygnus".
>> 
>> The reason I am saying this is because hundreds of people have contributed to
>> the linux project and *many* companies make money from linux.
>
>Yes, but you can write and distribute proprietry applications or even
>proprietry kernel modules for Linux without paying anyone a license fee.
>The same is not true for Cygwin (although it *was* true once, back around
>version b16, when it was called gnu-win32).

True, but that is not the point.  I believe this whold thread started
because I lamented the lack of people contributing directly to cygwin
development.  The many contributors to the linux kernel do not do so
because it is possible to develop proprietary code for linux.

I don't consider companies who create proprietary kernel modules as
contributing to linux development in any way.  Possibly they help indirectly
by getting the word out about linux but that is a secondary and, IMO, very
minor benefit.

cf

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