Re: Gnat 3.09 NT - Legal issues

[lance@eco.twg.com (Lance Kibblewhite)]

dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote:

>jonas asks
>
><<Can I be sure that ANY program I produce with Gnat 3.09 for NT/Win95 will
>not contain parts governed by the rules of LGPL. The Gnat license states
>that the inclusion of any library code does not fall under the terms of
>LGPL, but how do I know that there has not been included any code from
>the libraries provided by Cygnus (Gnu) in my application.
>>>
>
>Well someone always likes to raise FUD on this issue from time to time :-)
>There are no problems in this regard. No LGPL'ed or otherwise problematic
>code is included in your generated executables. 
>
>We will be happy to explain this further to any of our customers who might
>be concerned -- please send mail to sales@gnat.com if you have further
>questions.

Yes, but what about the Cygnus libraries?

Their Web page contains the following paragraph:

>How is this software copyrighted?
>
>Like all GNU software, the source code and modifications developed
>by Cygnus Support for this project are under the GNU General Public
>License (GPL). As of beta 17, library code in the cygwin.dll (which
>is embedded in your program if you use the gnu-win32 tools) is now
>under the GNU General Public License which means that unless people
>figure out a way of not linking against libcygwin.a (which is needed
>to make libc and libm work right now), the program most likely also
>has to become free software under the GPL. If in doubt, check the
>relevant files in the code for the copyright notices.

Which is fine.

However, over the weekend, I receieved a mail on the on the gnu-win32
mailing list which indicated that Cygnus intend to somehow modify this
policy to require some form of licensing for what they called
'proprietary' applications.

I don't have a copy with me at the moment, and I'm not sure if I saved
it at home or not.  If I do have it, I'll post it as a followup.

-- Lance.