Four license questions that affect commercial use of Cygwin

Luke Kendall luke.kendall@cisra.canon.com.au
Tue Sep 29 10:54:00 GMT 2009


Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> On Sep 29 20:32, Luke Kendall wrote:
>> Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>>> So, sure, Red Hat *could* do that, but that would mean to take over
>>> responsibility for something which is in the responsibility of the user
>>> in the first place.  Eventually only a lawyer can make sure you comply,
>>> but, apart from the responsibility, the job of a lawyer isn't exactly
>>> for free.  So this is a job to redirect to *your* legal department.
>> I don't think my four questions asked for legal advice,
> 
> In a way, yes.  Licensing is dangerous territory.  If we claim there's
> no exception from A and somebody find that exception, it's a sure way
> to be sued.  I, for one, can do without that.
> 
>> As an engineer, [...]
> 
> As a lawyer, [...]

:-)

> I'm with you on the engineering side, since I hate to reinvent the
> wheel same as you do.  However, this isn't technical, this is legal
> and as such I stay away as much as possible.

Fair enough!

>>> As for licenses with commercial exceptions, personally (IANAL, and I'm
>>> not speaking for Red Hat, nor for the Cygwin community at large, nor did
>>> I actually search for it) I think there is none in the distro, except
>>> for the Cygwin license itself.
>> I can't see anything in http://cygwin.com/licensing.html that says  
>> Cygwin can't be used for commercial purposes (thank goodness!).  Maybe  
>> you meant something else.
>>
>>> And that only applies to exceptions from the GPL.
> 
> You ignored the above sentence, which was the important one.

I confess I didn't ignore it, I just couldn't understand it.

Trying again now, I think you meant that there were no exceptions that 
applied only in commercial situations, except some exceptions relating 
to the GPL (looking at the license, I think it's related to 
redistribution of code that depends on GPL stuff).

I don't think you mean it is saying "you are not allowed to use Cygwin 
within a company, Cygwin is only for personal or scientific 
non-commercial research", and I'm happy that I can't see that. :-)

luke

> Corinna
> 


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