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Re: FAQ suggestion
Christopher Faylor wrote:
> I assume that they are either trying to 1) cheat, 2) bend the rules, 3)
> not spend any time whatsoever worrying about the problem, or 4) become
> annoyed because they have thought about it for thirty seconds and it
> seems like we're purposely trying to punish them.
I have to think the question comes up frequently, else
it wouldn't elicit such a strong reaction.
> But, yes, sure, a FAQ entry would not be a bad idea.
OK, I'm game:
--- snip ---
9. Deploying Cygwin
9.1 I want to bundle Cygwin with a product, and ship it to customer
sites. How can I do this without conflicting with any Cygwin
installed by the user?
A. Third party developers who wish to use Cygwin should check if
there is a version of cygwin installed and use the installed
version if it is newer, or conditionally upgrade if it is not.
(If you write a tool to make this easy, consider contributing
it to cygwin for others to use.)
9.2 Can I bundle Cygwin with my product for free?
A. Only if you comply with Cygwin's license very carefully.
If you choose to distribute cygwin1.dll, you must also
distribute the exact source code used to build that copy of cygwin1.dll.
If you ship applications that link with cygwin1.dll,
you must either provide those applications' source code under a
GPL-compatible license, *or* purchase a cygwin license from Red Hat.
9.3. Can I install a private version of cygwin that doesn't conflict
with the system cygwin (in the same way that multiple versions
of Wine can coexist)?
A. The Cygwin maintainers will resist any suggestion to support
this, no matter how sensible it might sound to you, because
they feel strongly that the only supportable situation is
for everybody to use the same cygwin instance, and for it
to be as up to date as possible.
9.4. But doesn't that mean that if some application installs
an older Cygwin library than my system had, my application will break?
A. Yes. If you run into such an application, uninstall it,
point the author to this FAQ, and try to get them to follow
the cygwin deployment rules.
--- snip ---
Is that getting closer?
- Dan
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