Re: Packaging software built with cygwin

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 08:48:03PM -0600, Jay Maynard wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 09:31:43PM -0500, Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
>>Now, hold on there, no need to jump the gun.  I'm not what you may call
>>"a definitive expert on Cygwin licensing".  In fact, whatever that page
>>says surely overrides what I said earlier.
>
>Okkay...that's what I'd been relying on, and hearing that it wasn't
>true after all was a shock.  I'm happy to hear that my original
>understanding was correct.

If you are distributing something that satisfies the "open source"
requirement then the program doesn't have to be GPLed.  If the QPL is
OSD-compliant, as you said, then there is no problem.

>>Remember that linking against some version of libcygwin.a doesn't mean
>>you have to keep to the corresponding version of cygwin1.dll.  Since
>>it's loaded dynamically, all you need is for the functions you need to
>>be present in the new DLL.  This is generally the case.
>
>Present *and* working the same or compatibly.  Unfortunately, we've
>found that that's not the case.

I sincerely doubt that you've found a problem where something that was
available in an older DLL is not available in a newer one.  The only
case I can think of where this happened is the dropping of //a for
/cygdrive/a.

>There's also a bug right now that causes allocation of three times as
>much memory as Hercules actually calls for.  (I believe that one's
>already been reported; it really hits Hercules hard, though, as it's
>not uncommon to have Hercules allocate 256 MB of memory for the
>emulated system's central storage, and a 768 MB allocation will drive
>most Windows boxes to their knees.)

I'm not aware of any bug report along these lines.  I must have missed
it.

A test case would be welcome.

>> Sorry to hear that.  AFAIK, you do have to provide sources for the
>> cygwin1.dll that you distribute.
>
>Damn. You know, this is one reason people stay away from the GPL...
>(I can go on for hours, and there are undoubtedly folks here who have heard
>me do it. Anyone who would like to get the whole rant is invited to contact
>me off-list.)

Thank you for showing restraint and not going on for hours.

However, just in case you need to hear it, it is true that you have to
provide the sources for the cygwin DLL if you want to distribute it.

cgf

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