Re: On Cygwin package naming and a setup.exe bug

[Robert Collins <robert.collins@itdomain.com.au>]

Ok... I slept through most of this thread :}. I'm going to make a couple
of comments though... to no particular poster/answer.

On 27 Aug 2001 13:39:17 -0400, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 27, 2001 at 04:39:46AM -0600, Warren Young wrote:
> >Christopher Faylor wrote:
> >> 
> >> >On our
> >> >SourceForge downloads page we distribute a source tarball, a few binary
> >> >RPMs, and a Cygwin binary package.
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Bernard, I'm not sure how the above underlined comment, when combined
with....

> >> And a cygwin source package, hopefully, if you want to be in compliance
> >> with the GPL.  
> >
> >Not so.  Section 3c of the GPL exempts noncommercial distributors from
> >having to carry the source.  They can simply point you to where they
> >downloaded the code themselves.
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
the above underlined paragraph; can be interpreted in any other fashion
than John is intentionally distributing a cygwin1.dll package, in the
belief that it is GPL blessed. 

If John had responded with "But it's *our* software in there in binary
form, not cygwin1.dll; I meant a binary package of out software compiled
for use on cygwin" then it would all be different!

So all comments in the thread that disagree with this should be referred
to John for clarification. IMO Chris and Chuck are correct.

OTOH there is a meme floating around somewhere that 3(c) is a
get-out-of-jail-free card - which it's not. This is a bad meme, that
should be squashed vigourously.

> >You shouldn't give John a hard time; the PRC-Tools project is a free
> >software project in much the same spirit as Cygwin.  In fact, the two
> >projects are very similar: a GCC port to a non-Unix platform, for making
> >binaries native to that platform.
 
I don't think Chris gave John a hard time. 'nuff said elsehwere anyway.
 
> >Now, if John were still working for Palm and posting from a palm.com
> >address, you'd be justified in being picky about the GPL.  But he's not,
> >and you shouldn't.

I'm surprised this one wasn't picked up on!. If Chris doesn't enforce
the GPL on the open/free source community, how can he expect
closed-source developers to respect it - especially given it hasn't been
tested in court.

> >> I've got mixed feelings about putting concessions for
> >> other packages in setup.  It isn't really supposed to be a general purpose
> >> installation tool.
> >
> >Keep in mind, this isn't a case of using setup.exe to install a
> >standalone package.  PRC-Tools on Windows is always used inside a Cygwin
> >environment.  John is just trying to make it simpler to make a PRC-Tools
> >distribution tarball that Cygwin's own installation tools will accept
> >and install.

It doesn't matter what the "other use of setup is" - setup.exe has
enough trouble just installing accurately, on the thousands of users
machines that use it. Adding special case considerations does _not_ make
sense, and I'd be one of the first folk to provide a patch to  remove
any such considerations from it. We are already trying to find a way to
remove the -src special consideration. The proposed patch was a
significant step backwards. (BTW: I contributed some-large% of the new
dependency and category handling code - so I suspect I know whereof I
speak).

> It apparently isn't clear to you that "Cygwin's own installation tools"
> were meant to install, um, the cygwin packages from the cygwin web site
> and mirrors.  They don't have accomodations for using other web sites or
> being bundled as part of a larger package.  That is what I was saying
> above.

IMO, adding features that don't carry much maintenance overhead is OK,
but there certainly won't be any cygwin developer driving such features
_unless_ they are also going to benefit from them. In this case the
"feature" was a problem. In others they have been added, with only
trivial discussion (even when cygwin doesn't really need them).

Rob


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