🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thu, 1 Mar 2001 16:35:48 -0700, Lyman Neuschaefer <lyman@bcsisims.com> wrote:
>Greetings,
>
>My company is contemplating using GNU libraries for our
>next project.
>
>Suppose we built an executable which links only to the open
>source cygwin.dll and delivered only the executable _without_
>also delivering cygwin.dll.  Would we be in breach of the GPL
>if we refused to provide our independently-developed source
>code needed to build the executable?
>
>I believe we would not be in breach of the GPL because the
>delivered executable, though depending on cygwin.dll, does
>not contain any object code compiled from cygwin GPL'd source
>code, but merely references symbols defined in cygwin.dll.
>
>I've read the GPL and LGPL but don't feel certain my interpretation
>is correct.  Can anyone help clarify on this issue?

The FSF would say your are. Others would say you weren't. I would suggest
contacting a lawyer for a professional legal opinion. In the end you can believe
whatever interpretation you like. If the copyright holder disagrees with you,
you may find yourself in court. Which would be good for all of us because it
would hopefully legally clarify which interpretation of the law is correct.
(where correct means agrees with court ruling - I'm not a lawyer I don't know
if they have a special term for that (since an appeal could change it)).

The opinion that matters is whether a program that is dynamically linked with
another program is a derivative of that program. That is matter of copyright
law and independant of the licenses involved.

Personally I think that legally it would be OK (but know of no legal precedant,
and I don't plan on spending the money on lawyers to set on either way), but
if the author held the other interpretation I would respect that and not
do so. But that is not a decision due to law, it's just a personal choice.

I'm reasonably sure that the authors of cygwin would hold the interpretation
that you can't. They would almost certainly not want you to. So if respecting
the wishes of the owner's matters to you then you should at least contact them
and find out what vie they hold.

There may be technicalities in the law that I don't know about. Maybe the
cygwin header files are GPL'd and your executable includes parts of them and
thus is a derivative. I don't know.

Contact the copyright holders, and contact a lawyer before you distribute
(unless you do a deal to license the library under some other license - which
may be hard if there are lots of owners).

I'm not a lawyer... don't take what I've said as legal advice since then I
don't even live in the country who's law probably matters in this case...

-- 
Sam Holden