From: drs AT inxpress DOT net (drs) Subject: Re: Cygnus Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97 12 Feb 1997 03:31:31 -0800 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <3300E0FF.4152.cygnus.gnu-win32@inxpress.net> References: Reply-To: drs AT inxpress DOT net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I) Original-To: Keith Gary Boyce Original-CC: gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Keith Gary Boyce wrote: > > I agree I have no copyright on any of the code but I did send in patches > for header files and I did port wxwindows to gnu-win32 platform. Also > i've seen other patches sent in by several other people (thus the use > of the term collective). > > No problem with cygnus doing anything they want in fact. The only problem > I have is that I can't do anything I want.. My question is as follows: if GCC is covered by the GPL, and cygnus does a port of GCC to some platform, using a particular strategy (cygwin32.dll) to achieve that end, then at what point did the GPL go away? By what right does Cygnus distribute a free compiler covered by the GPL, but then take it back for commerical clients? Cygwin32.dll is a necessary part of this particualr strategy of getting the toolset to run under Win32, so isn't it defacto covered by the GPL? --Cygwin32 is pretty obviously a part of the toolset --it is a tool which translates between two runtime interfaces. Not so different from an internal piece of the compiler itself, like cc1plus. So, in what sense can it be called proprietary? > In fact even that is not that > important since I have no aspirations to make money through this project. > What I view is a problem is what I have heard while working with people not > associated with cygnus (regarding porting their programs over to win95). > It seems everyone is excited at first about not having to be tied to > microsoft or borland but when it becomes apparent that they have to share > their source code they become disinterested in using gcc. I don't think this is right, Keith. Programs written with GCC do not have to be provided with source code. The only GNU tool I know of which requires this is Bison, and that is because Richard Stallman would like to see new languages built with it become freely available. > The reason why it > is important to convert people over to using gcc is that the more people > that are involved the more likely it is that progress is made. This is absolutely right. > (Linux effort for instance). If people are willing to give away their > programs for free but not willing to part with their source code and > with gnu-win32 they can't then that is a problem. > My mailing is not so say that cygnus has done anything wrong. In fact > I think that they have been very good to us giving us a free compiler > for windows. I am just trying to say that to bring others to this effort > in thousands rather than hundreds we at least have to be able to produce > native binaries without cygnus's library. [etc.] - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".