cygwin and GPL

cygwin and GPL

[Nicolas Grehalle]

hello,

I have a law problem.
I use cygwin on a CDROM to launch Apache and MySQL. This services allow to
use my application (a CGI program, in C) with a WebBrowser, IE for example,
on a local machine.

I can put cygwin sources on my Distribution, but I can't do that with my
application sources, because this application is a protoype of a commercial
one.

Could I distribute cygwin and my application on a commercial CDROM, but
without the sources of my application (but with all sources and requirements
of cygwin) ?

Thank you for help

N.


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Re: cygwin and GPL

[Corinna Vinschen]

On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 08:19:24AM +0200, Nicolas Grehalle wrote:
> hello,
> 
> I have a law problem.
> I use cygwin on a CDROM to launch Apache and MySQL. This services allow to
> use my application (a CGI program, in C) with a WebBrowser, IE for example,
> on a local machine.
> 
> I can put cygwin sources on my Distribution, but I can't do that with my
> application sources, because this application is a protoype of a commercial
> one.
> 
> Could I distribute cygwin and my application on a commercial CDROM, but
> without the sources of my application (but with all sources and requirements
> of cygwin) ?

You have two choices:
- Put the sources of your application on the CD and publish them under
  some sort of open-source license (GPL, BSD, LGPL, ...)
- Ask RH for a contract (which costs some bucks) and publish no source
  codes at all (Cygwin Library License). For more information see
  http://www.redhat.com/products/support/cygwin/

Corinna

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Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
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RE: cygwin and GPL

[Bernard Dautrevaux]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nicolas Grehalle [ mailto:ngrehalle@rennes.jouve.fr ]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 8:19 AM
> To: cygwin@cygwin.com
> Subject: cygwin and GPL
> 
> 
> hello,
> 
> I have a law problem.
> I use cygwin on a CDROM to launch Apache and MySQL. This 
> services allow to
> use my application (a CGI program, in C) with a WebBrowser, 
> IE for example,
> on a local machine.
> 
> I can put cygwin sources on my Distribution, but I can't do 
> that with my
> application sources, because this application is a protoype 
> of a commercial
> one.
> 
> Could I distribute cygwin and my application on a commercial 
> CDROM, but
> without the sources of my application (but with all sources 
> and requirements
> of cygwin) ?
> 
> Thank you for help

All depends on your application:

If you just use cygwin because you need a bash shell and some *nix utilities
but compile your application natively for Windows (using mingw or
-mno-cygwin), that is if you own application do *not* reference cygwin1.dll
in any way, the you just need to put the sources for the cygwin packages
that you provide in binary format.

OTOH, if your application uses cygwin1.dll, then your application *is*
GPLed, so you *must* give access to the source code to anybody gets the
binary. The only alternative is to buy a commercial cygwin license to
RedHat.

Best regards,

	Bernard

PS: Of course, as usual, IANAL and I don't talk for RedHat.

--------------------------------------------
Bernard Dautrevaux
Microprocess Ingenierie
97 bis, rue de Colombes
92400 COURBEVOIE
FRANCE
Tel:	+33 (0) 1 47 68 80 80
Fax:	+33 (0) 1 47 88 97 85
e-mail:	dautrevaux@microprocess.com
		b.dautrevaux@usa.net
-------------------------------------------- 

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