cygwin licensing question

Corinna Vinschen corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com
Thu Feb 27 09:34:00 GMT 2020


On Feb 26 16:37, William Deegan wrote:
> I'd also take a look at this:
> https://cygwin.com/licensing.html

https://cygwin.com/acronyms/#IANAL

I can't speak for any package in the distro apart from the setup tool
and the Cygwin package and its accompanying Cygwin-specific tools (the
"cygwin" package), but in terms of setup and the cygwin package, just
provide the sources of these packages together with your binaries.

If your way of distribution is a tweaked version of setup, you MUST
provide the tweaked sources to your customers per the GPL anyway.

If you provide all sources of all binaries you're delivering to your
customers, you're basically off the hook anyway.  Given that space and
bandwidth is not much of a burden these days, it's the easiest way to
comply with the idea of open source and their licenses.  The setup
tool is designed for source distribution anyway, so that's no problem
at all.

Apart from that, Brian is right.  You should really ask a lawyer who's
specialized in licensing.  Nobody here is qualified to give an answer
standing up in court.


Corinna


> 
> On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 4:04 PM Brian Inglis wrote:
> > On 2020-02-26 09:37, MrPmghost . wrote:
> > > I am Pierre Meignen, software developer working for a belgium company.
> > > I have a question regarding cygwin and its use.
> > > Is it allowed/legal to integrate cygwin installer (2.11.1(0.329/5/3))
> > into
> > > the installer of an application that we plan to distribute commercially?
> > > I have checked the past cygwin posts but I did not see any clear answer
> > to
> > > my question.
> > > I know how to handle source code in LGPL but I have difficulty to
> > > understand what I can do with cygwin (LGPL) but which also contains tools
> > > covered by the GNU GPL and so on.
> > > We have customized cygwin installer in order to install locally the
> > > necessary packages.
> > > Once in its execution, our application launches cygwin.bat and launch
> > > commands to upload embedded systems.
> > > We do not link towards cygwin.dll.
> >                          cygwin1.dll
> >
> > > We currently use the application internally but we plan to distribute it
> > > commerically in the future.
> > > Thanks in advance for your support/feedback,
> >
> > [Disclaimer: I am not any kind of lawyer or project lead just another
> > volunteer]
> >
> > Cygwin is not a formal organization and has no officers or lawyers, at best
> > volunteer project co-leads and maintainers with commit privileges to
> > primary
> > source repositories.
> >
> > Cygwin is an online project which has volunteers around the world
> > collaboratively maintaining a collection of packages archived and
> > distributed on
> > third party donated and supported domain names and infrastructure.
> >
> > Copyright and licence compliance is your responsibility if you download any
> > binaries or sources. As you are based in Belgium in the EU you also have to
> > comply with Belgian and EU law which may have stricter copyright and
> > licensing
> > compliance requirements.
> >
> > Each package comes with its own licensing terms, including cygwin
> > (cygwin1.dll)
> > and setup (setup_x86{_64}.exe), usually under (case insensitively):
> >
> >         /usr/share/{,doc/}PACKAGE{,-doc}/*{COPY,LICEN}*
> > or
> >         /usr/share/doc/common-licenses
> >
> > You will have to provide your corporate lawyers with the licences for each
> > package you wish to include in your product.
> >
> > Your corporate lawyers will have to determine what responsibilities you
> > have
> > related to package licensing requirements, what you must do (e.g. publish
> > and
> > attribute all copyrights and licences in your product distribution and
> > documentation, distribute and provide online source archives, and submit
> > patches
> > upstream, etc.), and how you are limited by the licences in what you may
> > do with
> > each package.
> >
> > As so many packages are licensed under the [L]GPL2/3 or by the FSF if GNU
> > sourced, see https://www.fsf.org/licensing/ your corporate lawyers may
> > want to
> > work with the FSF Licensing and Compliance Team mailto:licensing@fsf.org
> > or
> > their lawyers mailto:legal@fsf.org as Cygwin has no lawyers.
> >
> > In general, you probably need to document, track, submit, and log
> > submission of
> > any modifications you make to any Cygwin package source code as patches to
> > cygwin-apps@cygwin.com, or upstream to the upstream package maintainer or
> > source
> > given in the package source archive, often shown in a .cygport file.
> >
> > Question for project leads - who maintains the maintainer copyright
> > assignments,
> > attributions, disclaimers, releases, etc. and where, or is that all also
> > only in
> > some mail archives?
> >
> > --
> > Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
> >
> > This email may be disturbing to some readers as it contains
> > too much technical detail. Reader discretion is advised.
> >
> > --
> > Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
> > FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
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> >
> >
> 
> --
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-- 
Corinna Vinschen
Cygwin Maintainer
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