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Re: Cygwin participation threshold




> Does the GPL applies to GNUPro, which is distributed for commercial
> use?

GNUPro is made up of a number of components with a number of licensing
terms, just like djgpp is.  Those parts that are copyrighted by
authors other than Cygnus, like gcc, must be distributed under the
terms the author supplied, in this case the GPL.  Cygnus can do
nothing about that.

However, Cygnus is the author of some of those parts (like I'm the
author of djgpp's libc) and can choose alternate terms for alternate
distributions.  For example, our C runtime and cygwin runtimes were
written by us, so we can decide that they're GPL for this release, and
proprietary for that release.  If you purchase a GNUPro distribution
from us, it comes with the same software as a net release (except it's
been QAd, may have some as-yet-unreleased improvements over the net
release, and is supported by Cygnus) but we use a different license
that lets you use our runtimes in proprietary applications.  It just
isn't practical to provide source code for cell phones :) The fees from
these sales are the primary source of funding for the software, and
thus pay for the net releases.

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