cygwin licensing question

cygwin licensing question

[MrPmghost .]

Hi,



I am Pierre Meignen, software developer working for a belgium company.

I have a question regarding cygwin and its use.

Is it allowed/legal to integrate cygwin installer (2.11.1(0.329/5/3)) into
the installer of an application that we plan to distribute commercially?

I have checked the past cygwin posts but I did not see any clear answer to
my question.

I know how to handle source code in LGPL but I have difficulty to
understand what I can do with cygwin (LGPL) but which also contains tools
covered by the GNU GPL and so on.



We have customized cygwin installer in order to install locally the
necessary packages.

Once in its execution, our application launches cygwin.bat and launch
commands to upload embedded systems.

We do not link towards cygwin.dll.

We currently use the application internally but we plan to distribute it
commerically in the future.



Thanks in advance for your support/feedback,

BR,

Pierre Meignen

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Re: cygwin licensing question

[Brian Inglis]

On 2020-02-26 09:37, MrPmghost . wrote:
> I am Pierre Meignen, software developer working for a belgium company.
> I have a question regarding cygwin and its use.
> Is it allowed/legal to integrate cygwin installer (2.11.1(0.329/5/3)) into
> the installer of an application that we plan to distribute commercially?
> I have checked the past cygwin posts but I did not see any clear answer to
> my question.
> I know how to handle source code in LGPL but I have difficulty to
> understand what I can do with cygwin (LGPL) but which also contains tools
> covered by the GNU GPL and so on.
> We have customized cygwin installer in order to install locally the
> necessary packages.
> Once in its execution, our application launches cygwin.bat and launch
> commands to upload embedded systems.
> We do not link towards cygwin.dll.
                         cygwin1.dll

> We currently use the application internally but we plan to distribute it
> commerically in the future.
> Thanks in advance for your support/feedback,

[Disclaimer: I am not any kind of lawyer or project lead just another volunteer]

Cygwin is not a formal organization and has no officers or lawyers, at best
volunteer project co-leads and maintainers with commit privileges to primary
source repositories.

Cygwin is an online project which has volunteers around the world
collaboratively maintaining a collection of packages archived and distributed on
third party donated and supported domain names and infrastructure.

Copyright and licence compliance is your responsibility if you download any
binaries or sources. As you are based in Belgium in the EU you also have to
comply with Belgian and EU law which may have stricter copyright and licensing
compliance requirements.

Each package comes with its own licensing terms, including cygwin (cygwin1.dll)
and setup (setup_x86{_64}.exe), usually under (case insensitively):

	/usr/share/{,doc/}PACKAGE{,-doc}/*{COPY,LICEN}*
or
	/usr/share/doc/common-licenses

You will have to provide your corporate lawyers with the licences for each
package you wish to include in your product.

Your corporate lawyers will have to determine what responsibilities you have
related to package licensing requirements, what you must do (e.g. publish and
attribute all copyrights and licences in your product distribution and
documentation, distribute and provide online source archives, and submit patches
upstream, etc.), and how you are limited by the licences in what you may do with
each package.

As so many packages are licensed under the [L]GPL2/3 or by the FSF if GNU
sourced, see https://www.fsf.org/licensing/ your corporate lawyers may want to
work with the FSF Licensing and Compliance Team mailto:licensing@fsf.org or
their lawyers mailto:legal@fsf.org as Cygwin has no lawyers.

In general, you probably need to document, track, submit, and log submission of
any modifications you make to any Cygwin package source code as patches to
cygwin-apps@cygwin.com, or upstream to the upstream package maintainer or source
given in the package source archive, often shown in a .cygport file.

Question for project leads - who maintains the maintainer copyright assignments,
attributions, disclaimers, releases, etc. and where, or is that all also only in
some mail archives?

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

This email may be disturbing to some readers as it contains
too much technical detail. Reader discretion is advised.

--
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Re: cygwin licensing question

[William Deegan]

I'd also take a look at this:
https://cygwin.com/licensing.html

On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 4:04 PM Brian Inglis <
Brian.Inglis@systematicsw.ab.ca> wrote:

> On 2020-02-26 09:37, MrPmghost . wrote:
> > I am Pierre Meignen, software developer working for a belgium company.
> > I have a question regarding cygwin and its use.
> > Is it allowed/legal to integrate cygwin installer (2.11.1(0.329/5/3))
> into
> > the installer of an application that we plan to distribute commercially?
> > I have checked the past cygwin posts but I did not see any clear answer
> to
> > my question.
> > I know how to handle source code in LGPL but I have difficulty to
> > understand what I can do with cygwin (LGPL) but which also contains tools
> > covered by the GNU GPL and so on.
> > We have customized cygwin installer in order to install locally the
> > necessary packages.
> > Once in its execution, our application launches cygwin.bat and launch
> > commands to upload embedded systems.
> > We do not link towards cygwin.dll.
>                          cygwin1.dll
>
> > We currently use the application internally but we plan to distribute it
> > commerically in the future.
> > Thanks in advance for your support/feedback,
>
> [Disclaimer: I am not any kind of lawyer or project lead just another
> volunteer]
>
> Cygwin is not a formal organization and has no officers or lawyers, at best
> volunteer project co-leads and maintainers with commit privileges to
> primary
> source repositories.
>
> Cygwin is an online project which has volunteers around the world
> collaboratively maintaining a collection of packages archived and
> distributed on
> third party donated and supported domain names and infrastructure.
>
> Copyright and licence compliance is your responsibility if you download any
> binaries or sources. As you are based in Belgium in the EU you also have to
> comply with Belgian and EU law which may have stricter copyright and
> licensing
> compliance requirements.
>
> Each package comes with its own licensing terms, including cygwin
> (cygwin1.dll)
> and setup (setup_x86{_64}.exe), usually under (case insensitively):
>
>         /usr/share/{,doc/}PACKAGE{,-doc}/*{COPY,LICEN}*
> or
>         /usr/share/doc/common-licenses
>
> You will have to provide your corporate lawyers with the licences for each
> package you wish to include in your product.
>
> Your corporate lawyers will have to determine what responsibilities you
> have
> related to package licensing requirements, what you must do (e.g. publish
> and
> attribute all copyrights and licences in your product distribution and
> documentation, distribute and provide online source archives, and submit
> patches
> upstream, etc.), and how you are limited by the licences in what you may
> do with
> each package.
>
> As so many packages are licensed under the [L]GPL2/3 or by the FSF if GNU
> sourced, see https://www.fsf.org/licensing/ your corporate lawyers may
> want to
> work with the FSF Licensing and Compliance Team mailto:licensing@fsf.org
> or
> their lawyers mailto:legal@fsf.org as Cygwin has no lawyers.
>
> In general, you probably need to document, track, submit, and log
> submission of
> any modifications you make to any Cygwin package source code as patches to
> cygwin-apps@cygwin.com, or upstream to the upstream package maintainer or
> source
> given in the package source archive, often shown in a .cygport file.
>
> Question for project leads - who maintains the maintainer copyright
> assignments,
> attributions, disclaimers, releases, etc. and where, or is that all also
> only in
> some mail archives?
>
> --
> Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>
> This email may be disturbing to some readers as it contains
> too much technical detail. Reader discretion is advised.
>
> --
> Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
> FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
> Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
> Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
>
>

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
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Re: cygwin licensing question

[Corinna Vinschen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5627 bytes --]

On Feb 26 16:37, William Deegan wrote:
> I'd also take a look at this:
> https://cygwin.com/licensing.html

https://cygwin.com/acronyms/#IANAL

I can't speak for any package in the distro apart from the setup tool
and the Cygwin package and its accompanying Cygwin-specific tools (the
"cygwin" package), but in terms of setup and the cygwin package, just
provide the sources of these packages together with your binaries.

If your way of distribution is a tweaked version of setup, you MUST
provide the tweaked sources to your customers per the GPL anyway.

If you provide all sources of all binaries you're delivering to your
customers, you're basically off the hook anyway.  Given that space and
bandwidth is not much of a burden these days, it's the easiest way to
comply with the idea of open source and their licenses.  The setup
tool is designed for source distribution anyway, so that's no problem
at all.

Apart from that, Brian is right.  You should really ask a lawyer who's
specialized in licensing.  Nobody here is qualified to give an answer
standing up in court.


Corinna


> 
> On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 4:04 PM Brian Inglis wrote:
> > On 2020-02-26 09:37, MrPmghost . wrote:
> > > I am Pierre Meignen, software developer working for a belgium company.
> > > I have a question regarding cygwin and its use.
> > > Is it allowed/legal to integrate cygwin installer (2.11.1(0.329/5/3))
> > into
> > > the installer of an application that we plan to distribute commercially?
> > > I have checked the past cygwin posts but I did not see any clear answer
> > to
> > > my question.
> > > I know how to handle source code in LGPL but I have difficulty to
> > > understand what I can do with cygwin (LGPL) but which also contains tools
> > > covered by the GNU GPL and so on.
> > > We have customized cygwin installer in order to install locally the
> > > necessary packages.
> > > Once in its execution, our application launches cygwin.bat and launch
> > > commands to upload embedded systems.
> > > We do not link towards cygwin.dll.
> >                          cygwin1.dll
> >
> > > We currently use the application internally but we plan to distribute it
> > > commerically in the future.
> > > Thanks in advance for your support/feedback,
> >
> > [Disclaimer: I am not any kind of lawyer or project lead just another
> > volunteer]
> >
> > Cygwin is not a formal organization and has no officers or lawyers, at best
> > volunteer project co-leads and maintainers with commit privileges to
> > primary
> > source repositories.
> >
> > Cygwin is an online project which has volunteers around the world
> > collaboratively maintaining a collection of packages archived and
> > distributed on
> > third party donated and supported domain names and infrastructure.
> >
> > Copyright and licence compliance is your responsibility if you download any
> > binaries or sources. As you are based in Belgium in the EU you also have to
> > comply with Belgian and EU law which may have stricter copyright and
> > licensing
> > compliance requirements.
> >
> > Each package comes with its own licensing terms, including cygwin
> > (cygwin1.dll)
> > and setup (setup_x86{_64}.exe), usually under (case insensitively):
> >
> >         /usr/share/{,doc/}PACKAGE{,-doc}/*{COPY,LICEN}*
> > or
> >         /usr/share/doc/common-licenses
> >
> > You will have to provide your corporate lawyers with the licences for each
> > package you wish to include in your product.
> >
> > Your corporate lawyers will have to determine what responsibilities you
> > have
> > related to package licensing requirements, what you must do (e.g. publish
> > and
> > attribute all copyrights and licences in your product distribution and
> > documentation, distribute and provide online source archives, and submit
> > patches
> > upstream, etc.), and how you are limited by the licences in what you may
> > do with
> > each package.
> >
> > As so many packages are licensed under the [L]GPL2/3 or by the FSF if GNU
> > sourced, see https://www.fsf.org/licensing/ your corporate lawyers may
> > want to
> > work with the FSF Licensing and Compliance Team mailto:licensing@fsf.org
> > or
> > their lawyers mailto:legal@fsf.org as Cygwin has no lawyers.
> >
> > In general, you probably need to document, track, submit, and log
> > submission of
> > any modifications you make to any Cygwin package source code as patches to
> > cygwin-apps@cygwin.com, or upstream to the upstream package maintainer or
> > source
> > given in the package source archive, often shown in a .cygport file.
> >
> > Question for project leads - who maintains the maintainer copyright
> > assignments,
> > attributions, disclaimers, releases, etc. and where, or is that all also
> > only in
> > some mail archives?
> >
> > --
> > Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
> >
> > This email may be disturbing to some readers as it contains
> > too much technical detail. Reader discretion is advised.
> >
> > --
> > Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
> > FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
> > Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
> > Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
> >
> >
> 
> --
> Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
> FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
> Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
> Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple

-- 
Corinna Vinschen
Cygwin Maintainer

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Re: cygwin licensing question

[MrPmghost .]

Hi,

Thanks for all your feedback regarding this license subject. We will follow
your advice and ask a lawyer specialist in the matter.

Pierre

Le mer. 26 févr. 2020 à 17:37, MrPmghost . <pmghost4@gmail.com> a écrit :

> Hi,
>
>
>
> I am Pierre Meignen, software developer working for a belgium company.
>
> I have a question regarding cygwin and its use.
>
> Is it allowed/legal to integrate cygwin installer (2.11.1(0.329/5/3)) into
> the installer of an application that we plan to distribute commercially?
>
> I have checked the past cygwin posts but I did not see any clear answer to
> my question.
>
> I know how to handle source code in LGPL but I have difficulty to
> understand what I can do with cygwin (LGPL) but which also contains tools
> covered by the GNU GPL and so on.
>
>
>
> We have customized cygwin installer in order to install locally the
> necessary packages.
>
> Once in its execution, our application launches cygwin.bat and launch
> commands to upload embedded systems.
>
> We do not link towards cygwin.dll.
>
> We currently use the application internally but we plan to distribute it
> commerically in the future.
>
>
>
> Thanks in advance for your support/feedback,
>
> BR,
>
> Pierre Meignen
>

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
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