AW: Licence question regarding the delivery of Cygqin binaries

[Busch, Ciske]

Corinna,

unfortunately you confirmed what I suspected. But thank you very much for your quick answer. 

Have a nice weekend! 

Ciske

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Corinna Vinschen [mailto:corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com] 
Gesendet: Freitag, 29. März 2019 14:41
An: Busch, Ciske <c.busch@mpdv.com>
Cc: cygwin@cygwin.com
Betreff: Re: Licence question regarding the delivery of Cygqin binaries

On Mar 29 12:11, Busch, Ciske wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> (I used this email as suggested (in a rather old) forum post from 
> Corinna Vinschen. If this is not the right address I would be very 
> thankful if you could point me to another address.)
> 
> we have ported an older application from Linux to Windows and plan on 
> using this in a commercial release. Due to the nature of the older 
> application the Windows port uses tools from the Cygwin project which 
> are called either from code or using shell scripts - we do not link 
> either the Cygwin.dll nor any of the tools. You will find examples for 
> scripts and the list of binaries used below. We do not plan on making 
> our application available as open source.
> 
> Our understanding regarding licensing is that as long as we do not 
> link any part of the Cygwin distribution we are free to use them 
> without implications for our own software.
> 
> However we are not allowed to include the Cygwin binaries within the 
> installer of our application - which is a problem for us as we need to 
> have control over the versions our end users have installed.
> 
> So my question is: is there a way for us to acquire a license which would allow us to "bundle" the required Cygwin components with our software?

The Cygwin DLL itself is LGPLv3+.  The tools part of the Cygwin build itself are GPLv3+.  All other Open Source tools not covered by the Cygwin license retain their respective license.  Most of the licenses require you, the vendor, to provide the source code of these tools under the conditions of their respective license to your customers.  Some licenses also require to add license information to your documentation.

There is no bundle licensing available!

Ideally you should add the sources of all Open Source software part of your commercial offering to your software package, as well as adding the OSS licensing information for all packages to your documentation.

However, you should really check your licensing situation with a lawyer skilled in sofware licensing issues.  Naturally we can't give you any viable advice in terms of licensing compliant behaviour here.


Hope that helps,
Corinna

--
Corinna Vinschen
Cygwin Maintainer
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