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Cygwin licensing: Six pragmatic points

Since no one seems inclined to stop discussing this, I feel obligated
to make a few pragmatic points:

1) I do not believe that the LGPL is a feasible replacement for the
   GPL for Cygwin.  Even if I did, I sincerely doubt that I could
   convince an Executive VP that it would be a good idea to use
   this license agreement.

2) It is unlikely that any arguments put forth here will be likely to
   change the Cygwin licensing terms from the GPL to anything else.
   The pragmatic reason:  Changing the licensing means getting a lawyer
   involved.  That means that we would have to spend money to change
   things.  Ain't gonna happen.

3) We do not ignore potential violations of our license terms.  We may
   be unaware of violations but we do not ignore them.

4) We are willing to handle licensing considerations on a case-by-case
   basis but it is unlikely that we will be making things generically
   easier for people who want to distribute binaries without sources.

5) When/if the GPL version 3 is released it may have terms that are
   more amenable to net releases, allowing people to provide links to
   software sources.  If so, we will probably adopt this.

6) If a free software distributor needs clarification on what directories
   are required to build a complete cygwin distribution I will be happy
   to supply him with that information.  Here's a hint, though:  We provide
   just such a package in the snapshots directory, now.

-- 
cgf@cygnus.com
http://www.cygnus.com/

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