Licensing Issues?

[Charles Wilson]

David A. Cobb wrote:

> Would someone in the know please explain why there are licensing issues 
> between GLibC and Newlib?  Are they not both GPL?
> 

Sigh.  this has been explained so many times I am surprised your search 
of the archives did not reveal it.  You *did* search the archives, right?

Cygnus (now Red Hat) releases cygwin under two licenses: the GPL and a 
proprietary license.  People who purchase cygwin under the proprietary 
license are allowed to distribute cygwin-based binaries WITHOUT 
distributing their source code.  (You may not like this arrangement, but 
it's the way things are.  Besides, the proceeds pay Chris' and Corinna's 
and others' salaries...)

Anyway, ONLY the copyright owner of a particular work is allowed to 
establish the license terms.  If you take GPL code that you do not own, 
you can't change the license -- although the GPL gives you certain 
redistribution rights.

Since Red Hat needs to specify the license, they need to own the code. 
They don't own the glibc code.  Therefore they can't use it (as part of 
cygwin1.dll -- e.g. newlib)  [This also explains why everybody who 
contributes to cgywin1.dll must sign over copyright to Red Hat].

--Chuck