Revised Cygwin32 licensing terms_(re)

Sun, 13 Jul 1997 19:03:14 +0100 (WET DST)

On Sun, 13 Jul 1997, Frank Heckenbach wrote:

> 
> Jan-Jaap van der Heijden wrote:
> 
> > > The new licensing terms for Cygwin32 permits anyone to make use of Cygwin32
> > > without adhering to the GPL, and without being required to make their
> > > sources available, provided that in so doing they are not attempting to
> > > directly compete with Cygnus.
> 
> Doesn't this contradict the GPL? Or does it refer only to "add-ons" that are
> not GPLed?

I think it does. I posted a message to the cygnus mailinglist with my
complaints about this new license. The thing is, the new license says that
using cygwin.dll is *only* legal when it is used in combination with the
Cygnus GNUPro toolkit. GNUPro contains gcc, binutils etc. Other compilers
are explicitly denied permission.



This means:
1) GPC is not allowed to use it (regardless of the fact that it's also GNU
software etc. etc.)

2) If I modify GCC, it is no longer "GCC as distributed by Cynus as part
of Cynus GNUPro" and usage of cygwin.dll is illegal. This limits my
freedom to modify GCC as guaranteed by the GPL.

3) Last, but not least: a GNUPro subscription costs several thousand
dollars per year, and I don't believe Cygnus will keep distributing free
copies once the beta phase is over. (would you?)

There's only one possible conclusion: we have to get rid of any dependency
on cygwin.dll a.s.a.p. Cygnus claims this new license is to
secure their commercial edge in the embedded systems field. Since
embedded systems don't run Windoze, they must be thinking about
selling win32-hosted crosscompilers here. But the embedded system support
is inside GCC, binutils and gdb. So, you can always use djgpp or a free
unix to host your embedded-system tools.

The strength of cygwin.dll is that it makes it easy to port unix apps
unmodified to a win32 world. But this is not really important for GPC (a
dos-to-unix layer would be more useful ;-) )

Cygwin32 is not the only win32 targeting GCC project. EMX/NT exists for
some time, but it uses pre-BFD binutils, so I can't setup a linux->win32
cross toolchain (I always build the win32 GPC binaries on Linux)

Then, there's "mingw32", a modified cygnus-gcc (now also illegal?), which
produces binaries that don't rely on cygwin.dll, but use the CRTDLL.DLL
which comes with win95 and NT. My current (unpublished) win32-gpc was
already using this scheme, because the resulting code runs much faster,
and building DLL's is easier.

So, what I did was port GCC and binutils *themselves* to mingw32.
It took surprisingly little effort. The result is more or less a
win32-djgpp, and neither GCC nor the programs you build with it rely on
cygwin.dll anymore. I will build GPC using this scheme soon.

Although it doesn't use cygwin.dll, it is binary compatible with it. So,
tools I haven't ported yet I simply borrow from cygwin32.
 
The funny part is that it's trivial to build my new toolchain targeting an
embedded system, which was what Cygnus was trying to prevent. Not
only that, but it also doesn't have the funny behaviour of the unix
abstracion layer ("mount C: /dosc" -- what, I have to mount my own C
drive?). So, it's probably commercially even more interesting to Cygnus'
competitors in the embedded systems field than Cygnus' own stuff....

GPC/win32 will live!



Greetings,
		JanJaap

---
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not
necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going
to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly
overhead.  -- RFC1925.

Jan-Jaap van der Heijden (janjaap@Wit381304.student.utwente.nl)