[m-dev.] Cygwin32

[Tyson Richard DOWD]

> Tyson Richard DOWD, you wrote:
> The bits in [...] are paraphrasings of the legalese.
> Copyright law means that licenses can only restrict copying, not use.
> In fact we _can_ use cygwin.dll (see section 2.1 in the license),
> we just can't distribute it.
> 
> The Mercury compiler is not a derivative work of cygwin, and
> Cygnus have no power to prevent us from distributing source code
> that happens to work on gnu-win32.

Sure. This was never a worry. But we (or others) might have trouble
if trying to *enhance* gnu-win32 with Mercury specific enhancements.
Not that this is on the cards at the moment.

I just get nervous when confronted with a strange license. Too many
people are putting out licenses that are GPL, except for (weird specific
restrictions).

> Still, it would be nicer if cygwin32 had dual GPL/cygwin32 licensing schemes,
> just like perl has a dual GPL/artistic licensing schemes.

Indeed.

-- 
       Tyson Dowd           # Assimilation doesn't kill people -- 
                            # resistance kills people.
     trd at cs.mu.oz.au        # 
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~trd # (Seen on back of Borg cube.)