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Re: Mirosoft Interix contains Cygwin


Well, Ok stolen is the wrong word.  But no I cannot find the sources to any
GPL and LGPL
on their site.  May be I am missing some tiny tiny download somewhere.  If
you could find any source
on the following link, let me know please... so far I would classify their
ports of GNU products
as a violation of GPL because I did not receive code with my MSDN
subscription CD, I do not
find code on MSDN Subscriber downlaod site and I also do not find code at the
link they
say in ther License.txt (GPL.txt) file....
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu

I understand they can include GCC, G&& and all the other GNUish tools but
where is the code.
The GNU license included with MSDN cd is dates June 1991.  Is not their a
more recent GNU GPL?

Thanks
Suhaib


DJ Delorie wrote:

> > The April 2000 distribution of MSDN Universal Subscription contains
> > Microsoft Interix 2.2.
>
> Cool!  Now even Microsoft is seeing the benefits of open source software.
>
> > Burried way inside c:\Interix\usr\contriblib\gcc-lib\i386-pc-opennt is a
> > directory called
> > "cygnus-2.7.2-970404".  What actually it looks to me a GCC compiler
> > stolen from Cygwin B19 stock distribution.
>
> "Stolen" is the wrong word.  Remember, the whole point of the GPL is
> to guarantee the *right* to copy such software.  Such guarantees work
> equally for everyone - from the most prolific open source programmers
> to the most rabid proprietary vendors.  If Microsoft wants to copy and
> redistribute GPL'd software for their own benefit, that's fine - as
> long as they play by the same rules everyone else plays by.
>
> Plus, the i386-pc-opennt directory means that they *had* to rebuild
> gcc from source, targetting their system.  This means that there are
> now five wintel gccs - emx, djgpp, cygwin, mingw, and now interix.
> The cygwin-* directory is just the version number, and there's no
> reason why they couldn't start with sources from an old cygwin.
>
> > During installation it poped 20 GPL and LGPL warnings and said if
> > you need code go to Interix side and download... no code on the MSDN
> > Subscription download or Distribution CD itself... is not it the GPL
> > violation itself?
>
> I don't think so, as long as you *can* get the code off the web.  I
> think the FSF now allows web sites to fulfill the source requirement,
> as long as the web site is run by the company distributing the
> binaries.  I've heard rumors that the next GPL will allow this
> explicitly, but that was a while ago...
>
> But, if they are making sources available on the web, then they're
> following the GPL more than the people we had to grant cygwin
> exceptions to for binary-only distributions of "popular" packages.


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