Re: Cygnus Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97

[Jeremy Blackman <loki at maison-otaku dot net>]

On Thu, 13 Feb 1997, Jim Balter wrote:

> Jeremy Blackman wrote:
> 
> > But what if, at some point in the future, I wanted to write and release
> > something shareware (since I prefer gcc over VC++, generally speaking.  I
> > use VC++ enough at work, thanks).  While I understand that if I then did
> > not wish to release the source code (which with a shareware program is
> > fair enough), then I'd need to pay Cygnus a fee, what is still unclear is
> > HOW MUCH this fee exactly would be.
> 
> You don't have to pay Cygnus just for using gcc.  You only have to pay
> to distribute ("copy"; it's a copyright) something that belongs to them.
> Building an executable that is linked with libcygwin.a, for instance,
> incorporates into your executable pieces that belong to them.
> Distributing cygwin.dll is distributing something that belongs to them.
> But if you have built something that is independent of the library,
> via mingw32, say, you don't have to pay Cygnus anything.

Fair enough.  The particular program I've been porting has needed 
cygwin.dll for some of the UNIX-style functionality, though.

It still isn't a problem for me right now as I release the source code to 
the aforementioned program already, with the UNIX version (which contains 
eerything needed to recompile under Windows).  But it would help me form 
an opinion on this more if I knew what the licensing terms would be.  So 
far, Cygnus has been remarkably silent on this topic, despite repeated 
requests for information on this mailing list; that sort of disturbs me, 
truthfully.  I'd like to know what sort of terms there are on the 
cygwin.dll usage (financially, that is) before I get too used to using 
that instead of, say, mingw32 if I were to want to release a shareware 
(e.g. no source code) program using cygwin at some point in the future.

+---[ Loki ]------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| Jeremy Blackman       | NeonMuck coder/maintainer - Multimedia MU*!       |
| loki@maison-otaku.net | http://www.maison-otaku.net/neon                  |
+-----------------------+---------------------------------------------------+

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