Revised Cygwin32 licensing terms

[Per Abrahamsen]

marcus@cathcart.sysc.pdx.edu (Marcus G. Daniels) writes:

> In the free software community, the question for contributors is
> whether it makes sense to work on the cygwin32 Unix emulation code now
> that it is no longer free software. When win32sup was GPLed,
> that was easy to rationalize.

It would be simple to distribute cygwin.dll under a dual license, like
Perl that is distributed under both the GPL and the Artistic License.

> I'd suggest thinking very carefully about assigning copyright on
> cygwin32 code to Cygnus.

Yep.  A dual license would help those of us who have already figured
out that the GPL is acceptable.  

For example, my project is a physical simulation.  It has a simple
input language with a Lisp like syntax.  The language is designed to
make it possible to replace it with a real lisp engine, like Guile.
But Guile is a (byte-code) compiler, and would make my application fit
the definition of a "Compiler Suite" from the Cygwin32 license.  The
other restrictions have similar problems.

The other question is of course if cygwin.dll can still be
rationalized as free software, and if not whether you want to
contribute to the development of proprietary code.  A dual license
would make it clear that cygwin.dll is still free software in the GNU
sense of the word, and not just in the Microsoft Internet Explorer
sense of the word.
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