GPL violation ?

[Chris Herborth]

Vince Hoffman wrote:

> Checkpoint appear to be distributing cygwin1.dll (as well as gzip and
> gtar) without any obvious sources available. if fact of the 3 GPL utils
> its the only that doesnt have its own copying notice (they do at least
> provide a copy of the GPL.)

Go read the GPL; you only need to provide sources to people who 
_ask_for_them_.  These days, you could probably just refer them to a web 
page or something.  Also, they have to make any _changes_ they've made to 
the source available.

Including GPL'd code in a project as a shared library/DLL is just peachy; 
GPL requires the end-user to be able to replace/upgrade the GPL'd hunk 
without intervention.

I went through all this nonsense (IMHO) when I built a binary Python 
distribution for BeOS way back when... I wanted to include readline support, 
but libreadline is GPL'd.

> I havent contacted them about this as i could be in error and havent at
> the moment got time for an exaustive search of their site, but i thought
> i'd best let the list know.

So contact their tech support and tell them you want the code for 
cygwin1.dll, gzip, tar, plus any changes they've made to the code...

Hope I wasn't sounding too snippy in this message, I've actually had to 
explain this several times this week.  Must be related to the change in 
seasons. ;-)

-- 
Chris Herborth                                     chrish@cryptocard.com
Documentation Overlord, CRYPTOCard Corp.      http://www.cryptocard.com/
Never send a monster to do the work of an evil scientist.


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