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Re: Things you can do with Cygwin


DJ, you just went off the deep end with that one. We need to remember
that the GPL has never been tested in court so sitting around
declaring what it might mean strikes me as a waste of time.

The static linking case is clear. Dynamic linking is not so clear,
it is likely covered by the GPL but who knows for sure. GPLed
Java libs use dynamic linking but do not cause Java programs
to become GPLed. Talking to a GPLed program over
a socket does not have anything to do with the GPL.

If I unsubscribe from this mailing list does pine become GPLed :)

Mo Dejong
Red Hat Inc.

On Tue, 2 May 2000, DJ Delorie wrote:

> 
> > Then again if you wanted to be more legal, stick the Cygwin stuff 
> > into a server program and talk to it only via RPC or sockets instead 
> > of direct dynamic linking.
> 
> The GPL doesn't talk about programs, it talks about "works".  It
> doesn't matter how the two parts communicate.  The legal definition of
> "works", I've been told, is pretty clear, so it would be easy for the
> court to decide if your tricks were a violation or not, if it ever
> came down to that.
> 
> My rule is that if you split it up for the purposes of avoiding the
> GPL, you probably aren't avoiding it.
> 
> > violate the GPL, but then if that was the case you would never be 
> > able to run proprietry programs under Linux because GNOME is GPL as 
> > is the Linux kernel.
> 
> The linux kernel (or libc, I forget which) has an exception in its
> copyright that specifically allows this.  It's not a side-effect of
> the GPL.
> 
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