Re: Cygnus Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97

[Jim Balter <jqb at netcom dot com>]

Stan Shebs wrote:
> 
> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
> 
> > [...]  Cygnus apparently no longer
> > shares the FSF philosophy towards free software. [...]
> 
> The real situation is more complicated than that.  Cygnus is not the
> FSF, nor is the FSF part of Cygnus, and nor is Cygnus part of the FSF.
> There have always been issues where Cygnus is at odds with the FSF.
> We do highly confidential work for companies whose processors are
> still being designed, we did a Mac port back when the FSF boycotted
> Apple, we distribute a version of GDB with tcl/tk built in.  We've
> been doing these kinds of things for a long time, often over the FSF's
> explicit objections.
> 
> Cygnus and the FSF do share many views about free software, but the
> FSF's goals are more purely promotion of the idea, while Cygnus' goals
> are more to make money from the idea.  Both are valuable; the FSF
> stands for something that inspires programmers and users, while Cygnus
> acquires millions of dollars per year and puts it into actual GNU
> development, much of it on unglamorous internal stuff that would never
> get done otherwise.

I was not referring to Cygnus' philosophy in general, only their
philosophy towards FREE software.  Placing free software under
both the GPL and under a restricted-distribution license is a definite
deviation.  One result is that folks like me, who are thoroughly
familiar with the POSIX standard and just how far cygwin deviates
from it, will now be loathe to share any improvements to it.
If I do share them, I will put them under the GPL, which means *you
can't use them*, which means that cygwin as a public entity and cygwin
as a Cygnus proprietary entity would diverge, something that the GPL
and LGPL were explicitly intended to avoid.

So, just how much money do you really think you can make from your
proprietary licenses, that this is worth it?  Have you folks even
*considered* putting cygwin under the LGPL and charging for support,
per your motto?

--
<J Q B>
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