Re: seperate xfree project on sourceforge

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2001 at 06:49:40AM +1100, Matthew Donald wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Christopher Faylor" <cgf@redhat.com>
>To: <cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com>
>Cc: <rasjidw@bigpond.com>
>Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 6:03 AM
>Subject: Re: seperate xfree project on sourceforge
>
>> On Mon, Nov 19, 2001 at 07:05:47PM +1100, Matthew Donald wrote:
>>>Why?  Well, integrating xfree into win32 cleanly is going involve COM
>>>objects.  AFAIK, gcc doesn't support COM (and the thought of doing COM
>>>in raw C is pretty revolting).  Gcc wont work with MFC or ATL, and
>>>anyway both of those involve Microsoft licenses.  So that leaves a
>>>choice of using a Microsoft/Borland C compiler (do any other C
>>>compilers come with a MFC/ATL license?) or using a high-level language
>>>such as VB or Delphi.
>>
>>So, it sounds like you have some immediate licensing issues that could
>>cause this project to be stillborn.  How are you going to work around
>>the fact that cygwin requires open source?
>
>Cygwin only requires the project source to be available.  GPL does not
>require compiler source to be available (unless the compiler as opposed
>to the project is subject to GPL).  As I made clear in my previous
>post, there are no suitable open source tools available to code COM
>objects (unless someone is going to make a MFC or ATL clone for gcc
>available RSN :-)

As long as any proprietary libraries that are linked into the end
product are common to the OS (i.e., Windows) and the sources are
available for everything else, you should be ok.  If this requires
additional libraries that are not part of the OS, then you can't
do this.  For some reason, I thought this was the case here.  Apparently
I was mistaken.

>>>Rasjid Wilcox had a very similar idea to winfree86 named winxterm (see
>>>http://lasp.sourceforge.net/winxterm/ ).  He has already produced a
>>>minimal cygwin + xfree of about 4mb.  If we can integrate the two
>>>projects winfree86 (or whatever its called) will be available much
>>>sooner.
>>
>>This sounds like YA ill-conceived fork.  And, oh joy, oh rapture, it is
>>also YA GPL violation.
>>
>>I've Cc'ed Rasjid.  Rasjid -- you need to provide the sources for the
>>binary packages that you are providing, in compliance with the GPL.
>>Just providing a link to cygwin.com is not sufficient.
>
>Yes the source code will be made available.
>
>Please keep your flames to yourself.  Don't you have real problems to
>worry about?

I worry about people providing old versions of cygwin, which you will
be doing.

I also worry about people not adequately understanding the GPL.

You apparently think that I should just "trust" you but experience
has shown that you can't trust anyone to understand the GPL.

cgf