Re: Bundling cygrunsrv with stand-alone projects

[Christopher Faylor <cygwin-no-personal-reply-please at cygwin dot com>]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 12:15:54PM -0400, Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
>On Thu, 14 Oct 2004, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>
>> On Oct 14 10:16, Soeren Nils Kuklau wrote:
>> > we're working on a cross-platform server daemon which on Windows gets
>> > compiled through Cygwin. To make installation convenient for Windows
>> > users, we would like to bundle `cygwin1.dll' and the necessary files for
>> > `cygrunsrv' with our Windows port. Before we try and implement that on
>>
>> Why?  You know that you create a couple of problems for users who already
>> have installed Cygwin on their machines?
>> [snip]
>>
>> > our side, however, we would like to know about the licensing implications.
>> >
>> > The project is `non-commercial' (as in 1) our primary purpose isn't to
>> > make big bucks off it and 2) it is available for download at no cost)
>> > and `open-source' (as in there's an issue tracker, and we will probably
>> > allow anonymous SVN access to the source as the project becomes more
>> > stable), but not under a GPL-compatible license.
>>
>> The secret word is "GPL".  It doesn't matter if you want to make money
>> with it as long as you release your source code under an Open-Source
>> compliant license according to the following definition:
>>
>>   http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.html
>>
>> If your software doesn't meet these criterias, you will have to buy
>> a buy-out license from Red Hat, see http://cygwin.com/licensing.html
>
>Hmm, I may be opening a can of worms here, but doesn't GPL allow bundling
>GPL'd binaries with other binaries that aren't GPL-compatible (or even
>open-sourced) as long as they aren't linked together?  At least, that's
>what the "mere aggregation" clause covers -- see
><http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndNonfreeOnSameMachine>
>(<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation>) and
><http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem>.

No one said you couldn't distribute your own non-GPLed code any way that
you see fit.

If you are distributing cygserver or the cygwin DLL or binaries which link
to the cygwin DLL, then you have to adhere to the GPL.  That means that
you must include the sources of cygserver, the cygwin DLL, and the binary
which you linked using the cygwin DLL.

>> Please note that when you're distributing binary versions of Cygwin and
>> cygrunsrv, you also have to provide the sources from which the Cygwin
>> and cygrunsrv versions have been built to comply with the GPL.  You must
>> not rely on Red Hat keeping the sources of these versions for you.
>
>Yes.  The GPL FAQ is a good read in any case -- perhaps the first message
>on this list should've pointed people to it...

New people are joining all of the time.  Sending one message to the list
is not going to solve anything.

I've modified the lists.html page to make it clear that the GPL FAQ and
cygwin licensing pages are mandatory reading for this list.