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Re: Licensing/Installer Questions


Hello Corinna,

Thank you for the prompt reply. I'm still a little confused.

1) Licensing. Could you please explain what "linking against Cygwin" means? I'm guessing that is for trying to port a Unix application to Windows? We're just wanting to use a few of the open-source tools (grep, find, ghostscript, etc.), so I'm guessing we do *not* need to purchase a special license, but we just want to be sure.

2) Installer. We could use some specifics on how to comply with the cygwin lincensing.

I think ideally our product would have a single installer that includes our closed-source product, whatever open-source cygwin tools our product relies on, and the full sources of cygwin. How exactly do we include the proper cygwin files? If we do a sample cygwin install on a PC, does the cygwin folder conatin everything we need (open-source tools + cygwin source), or is it more complicated than that?

Regards,
Sean

On Wednesday, March 01, 2006, at 05:02AM, Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:

>On Mar  1 02:46, Michael Banks wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> Our company has released a commercial product for the medical industry
>> called SpongePACS ( http://www.spongepacs.com ). It was developed in a
>> database program called FileMaker Pro, which has the ability to access
>> the command line. In fact, SpongePACS relies heavily on utilities like
>> grep and find, which come with a standard installation of Mac OS X.
>> 
>> Since we want to also target the larger Windows user base, we need to
>> find Windows equivalents, and Cygwin has worked fine in our testing,
>> but I have a couple of questions:
>> 
>> 1) Licensing. I've read the licensing pages, but I'm still confused.
>> We're not porting a Unix/Linux application to Windows. All we need are
>> a dozen or so packages (mainly from the Base category, plus a few
>> others). Do we still need to purchase a special Cygwin license from
>> Red Hat?
>
>
>The Cygwin buy-out license covers the case in which a proprietary
>application is linked against Cygwin and should stay proprietary.  In
>this case you have to purchase the license.
>
>If your closed-source applications are not linked against Cygwin, or if
>you decide to convert the license of your product to a blessed open-
>source license, then you don't have to purchase the Cygwin buy-out
>license.
>
>If Cygwin is only used for open-source tools which are packed with
>your applications, then that's fine.  But see below.
>
>> 2) Installer. As I mentioned before, SpongePACS is a product for the
>> medical industry. Believe it or not, many doctors' offices do *not*
>> have an Internet connection, so can we bundle a Cygwin installer that
>> just has the needed packages, and include this installer on a CD with
>> our product?
>
>Whatever you do, please keep in mind that you have to provide the full
>sources of Cygwin and all accompaning open-source tools.  If you fail to
>give your customers the source codes, you're infringing the license.
>
>
>HTH,
>Corinna
>
>-- 
>Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
>Cygwin Project Co-Leader          cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
>Red Hat
>
>


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