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

Peter Ekberg wrote:

>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,
>  
>
CYGWIN ISN'T GCC.  It is a POSIX runtime for windows.  That runtime is 
what they own copyright of.  That runtime makes use of the w32api library.

>and I bet that gcc is part of what they ship to their
>proprietary customers. 
>
Yes of course they would.  Redhat doesn't own the copyright for GCC.

>They can do this precisely because the
>license of gcc allows their proprietary customers to use gcc
>as users normally use a compiler. 
>
But that doesn't circumvent the fact that Redhat owns the copyright of 
the Cygwin runtime and without a special purpose proprietary use license 
any software that would use the runtime would be instantly covered by 
the GPL.

>The same is true with these
>DirectX headers. I don't see the difference.
>  
>
We do not own the source for the libraries the headers are 
representing.  The headers we provide are then therefore the source.  
Use of source that is L/GPL is infective with the same L/GPL license.  
Based on already established practice, we will not accept the L/GPL 
license for headers added to w32api or the MinGW runtime.

>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?
>  
>
No, see the previous paragraph.

Earnie

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