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Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:45:57 +0200
From: Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Four license questions that affect commercial use of Cygwin
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On Sep 29 19:18, Luke Kendall wrote:
> The URL http://cygwin.com/licensing.html (in summary) says that most  
> Cygwin software is licensed under GNU GPL, X11 copyright (not sure how  
> that's a license), and some are public domain.
>
> I'm just wondering what's the recommended way to check that use of  
> Cygwin internally at a company (no re-distribution) complies with all  
> the licenses.
>
> Obviously, if Cygwin (Red Hat?) provided answers to the above questions,  
> it would save an enormous amount of repeated legal work. (N hours per  
> license per company that uses Cygwin.)

First of all, it might depend on the selection of packages you made
since, obviously, licenses of packages which you don't use are no
concern for you.

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.

A list of licenses used in Cygwin packages is in the cygwin-docs
package, plus, every package with a non-standard license typically
provides it under /usr/share/doc/<packagename>.  However, there's no
guarantee that the list is complete.

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.  And that only applies to exceptions from
the GPL.

Other than that, licensing questions should better go to the
cygwin-licensing mailing list.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Project Co-Leader          cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat

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