Legal aspects of using the GNU-Win32 tools?

Arlindo da Silva arlindo@niteroi.gsfc.nasa.gov
Tue Nov 25 05:57:00 GMT 1997


Dear Reinhard,

> 
> I've ported a UNIX application to Windows 95/NT using the Cygwin32
> API, the GNU-Win32 tools, and the X11R6.3 libraries from
> ftp://niteroi.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/win32/X11R6.3 . Unfortunately, I am not
> in a position to freely distribute the source code of this application
> (automating the analysis of 2D NMR spectral data).  So I plan to give
> out (or sell) my binary PC application without the used tools and
> dynamically linked libraries. (Yes, every user would have to ftp the
> libraries and tools from the original sites before being able to run
> my ported application.)
>

I believe that the X11 DLL's are not under the same restrictive license
as cygwin.dll. From the X11R6.3 RELNOTES.TXT file:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright c 1996 X Consortium
 
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, dis-
tribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit
persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the fol-
lowing conditions:
 
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not being a lawyer, I'd say that you could go ahead and ship the X11 DLLs with
your application, if you plan to sell it. But talk to a lawyer if you have
any doubt.

-- 
Arlindo da Silva    
dasilva@alum.mit.edu


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