RE: ddraw.h, dinput.h and dsound.h in Cygwin/MinGW

Earnie Boyd wrote:
> Peter Ekberg wrote:
>> I'm sorry, I don't grasp what is so special about the w32api?
>> Please inform me. I mean, the Cygwin project surely does not have
>> copyright ownership of everything under L/GPL it distributes.
>> When I read http://www.redhat.com/software/cygwin/ I can't see
>> how these DirectX headers affect any of the promises. But that
>> page does not provide the finer details of the contract, so again,
>> please enlighten me. 
>> 
> Cygnus now Redhat needs to own the copyright of all L/GPL
> source so that
> they can change the license at will.  They have a proprietary use
> license that they sell for $.

But that's not true, they don't own the copyright on e.g. gcc,
and I bet that gcc is part of what they ship to their
proprietary customers. They can do this precisely because the
license of gcc allows their proprietary customers to use gcc
as users normally use a compiler. The same is true with these
DirectX headers. I don't see the difference.

Yes, they own the copyright to the cygwin1.dll and possibly some
other stuff, and some stuff is public domain or otherwise suitably
relicenseable. But that proprietary use license cannot cover
everything they ship. I don't see why they cannot include these
headers in their offer.

Is the problem you see based on the fact that these headers are
going to be (perhaps not, this has the distinct feeling of a dead
end) in the same cvs repository as the stuff Redhat offers with a
proprietary use license?

Cheers,
Peter