Re: Gnat 3.09 NT - Legal issues

Re: Gnat 3.09 NT - Legal issues

[Robert Dewar]

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.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: Gnat 3.09 NT - Legal issues

[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.

Re: Gnat 3.09 NT - Legal issues

[Fergus Henderson]

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. 

People do often like to raise FUD about GPL issues, but in this case
I'm not yet completely convinced that it is FUD.

If the code generated by GNAT for NT/Win95 using cynwin32 really doesn't 
include any of the libcygwin.a code, could you perhaps explain to us
how (technically speaking) you avoided that?

(Or do I have to download the source and figure it out myself? ;-)

--
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>   |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3         |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.

Re: Gnat 3.09 NT - Legal issues

[Lance Kibblewhite]

This is the email I received on the Gnu-Win32 list regarding Cygnus'
plans for licensing Cygwin32.

>From: Geoffrey Noer <noer@cygnus.com>
>Subject: Cygnus Cygwin32 Press Release 1/21/97
>To: gnu-win32@cygnus.com
>Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 01:29:11 -0800 (PST)
>Cc: noer@cygnus.com (Geoffrey Noer)
>Sender: owner-gnu-win32@cygnus.com
>
>Greetings,
>
>Following is a copy of the recent Cygwin32 press release made on Jan 21,
>1997.  Of particular note is the fact that Cygnus will be selling
>commercial licenses for Cygwin32 in the first half of 1997.  This means
>that companies wishing to use the Cygwin32 library in proprietary programs
>will be able to do so with a license from Cygnus.  Cygnus will continue
>to provide public releases under the GPL for those people using the library
>in conjunction with the development of free software.
>
>I will send more detailed information to the lists as it becomes available.
>
>Regards,
>
>Geoffrey Noer
>Cygnus Solutions
>noer@cygnus.com
>
>---------------------------------> snip <---------------------------------
> 
>News Release
>For more information contact
>Cygnus Solutions
>Jeacline Marinkovic
>+1-408-542-9600
>
>Cygnus's cygwin32 Supports NT and UNIX Hosts from Single Source Base
>
>Cygnus Solutions announces a preview release of cygwin32--the most complete
>C and C++ POSIX development environment for WindowsNT. With cygwin32,
>developers can support WindowsNT and multiple UNIX platforms from a single
>source base. Cross-platform host targets from a single source base
>provides: 
>
>      * True compatibility of multi-platform applications 
>      * Reduced support costs in development and deployment 
>      * Significantly accelerated time to market 
>
>Cygnus developed cygwin32 in order to port key Internet software packages
>from UNIX to WindowsNT. Popular Internet technologies, such as the GNU
>development tools, MIT's Kerberos, and the Apache web server are freely
>available for the range of UNIX hosts. Cygnus, recognizing the migration
>trend of multi-user applications to NT, created a solution that would bring
>cross-platform support without the development and support costs of
>modifying source code. 
>
>With Cygwin32, the cost of multiplatform support is substantially
>reduced. Existing UNIX source code does not require special changes to
>migrate from Unix to WindowsNT. This means that software can be delivered
>to WindowsNT customers without migrating the sources away from Unix or
>investing in NT development resources.
>
>As a powerful example of this capability, Cygnus ported 250,000 lines of
>software originally part of MIT's Kerberos source base to WindowsNT --
>effectively without changing the source. Not only did Cygwin32 make it
>possible to guarantee Kerberos compatibility across Unix and WindowsNT
>(since both can run the same source base), but it also enabled Cygnus to
>demonstrate the world's first version of Kerberos 5 running on
>WindowsNT. Cross platform support for key Internet technologies was
>highlighted earlier this month when Microsoft announced that WindowsNT 5.0
>will standardize on Kerberos user authentication. Cygnus's KerbNet for NT
>was in beta test as Microsoft made this announcement. 
>
>The preview release of cygwin32 is at 
>
>	ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/pub/gnu-win32/gnu-win32-b17.1 
>
>This software is covered by the GNU General Public License. A commercial
>version with commercial licensing terms will be available in the first half
>of 1997. Cygnus will continue development of cygwin32, targeting additional
>functionality, such as an integrated development environment, for the
>commercial release.
>-
>For help on using this list, send a message to
>"gnu-win32-request@cygnus.com" with one line of text: "help".
>

-- Lance.

Re: Gnat 3.09 NT - Legal issues

[Richard Kenner]

In article <5dnpk4$iq9@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> fjh@murlibobo.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson) writes:
>If the code generated by GNAT for NT/Win95 using cynwin32 really doesn't 
>include any of the libcygwin.a code, could you perhaps explain to us
>how (technically speaking) you avoided that?

99% of libcygwin.a is automatically-generated jump vectors to
cygwin32.dll, which is GPL'ed, but not included in the generated
executable.  The rest of the files used to build that library, plus
the file used to build crt0.o, constitute only a handful of files,
some of which were copyrighted under the Berkeley copyright, which
imposes no restrictions.  For the remaining couple of files, which
were tiny, we rebuilt libcygwin.a using the sources of those files
from an earlier version of Cygwin32, when they did not have GPL
copyrights.

Thefore no code contained in the user's executable is covered by the
unmodified GPL (the GNAT run-time-library sources are covered by a
modified version of the GPL which permits use of the objects, without
restrictions, in user executables).