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Re: Licensing for academic computer labs at a university


On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Elfyn McBratney wrote:

> Scott Copus <Scott.Copus@wku.edu> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Would it be possible to incorporate Cygwin into computer lab images for
> > computer labs at an educational institution for academic use by students?
> >
> > Would the source have to be included too if it was included on each hard
> > drive of a lab workstation?  (I'm talking about a pre-installed
> > package--not a "setup" that students must run first.)
>
> IANAL, but you'll need to give them source, too. If your distributing this
> (binary) "package" to your students, you need to give them the source code
> for the corresponding binaries (in one way or another).
>
> You should aquaint yourself with the GPL FAQ (available one GNU's website
> here <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html>).
>
> > The FAQ mentions the full package itself is approximately 800MB--NOT
> > INCLUDING the source code.  If I were required to include the source
> > code (even if it's still tarred and g-zipped), then does anyone know how
> > much space would that require?
>
> Binary ~400MB, source ~500MB. Something like that anyway.
> -- Elfyn

Scott,

Note that the GPL only requires you to provide the source for the binaries
you distribute.  So, if you set up a shared network drive with the sources
that were pre-installed on the hard-drives, that should be quite enough to
satisfy the GPL (however, IANAL, so please consult a lawyer if you are
worried about licensing).  If the students update their installations,
they should be able to get the new sources from wherever they got the
binaries anyway.

Also note that not all the packages available from Cygwin mirrors are used
by (or useful to) the general public -- some are highly specialized, and
thus don't have to be included into your distribution (e.g., lilypond or
xinetd or rsync, unless your students typeset sheet music, or administer
their Windows services through Cygwin, or maintain mirrors, respectively).
Some also have similar functionality, e.g., pdksh and astksh, so there's a
tradeoff between functionality and code size, since you won't need both
packages.
	Igor
-- 
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