Cygwin library now available under GNU LGPL

https://www.redhat.com/en/about/blog/cygwin-library-now-available-under-gnu-lesser-general-public-license

by rcarmo • 10 years ago

125 73 10 years ago

See also the announcement by the Cygwin maintainer, Corinna Vinschen: https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2016-06/msg00326.html

JoshTriplett2• 10 years ago

it also allows us to drop the requirement for contributor's to sign a copyright assignment.

Excellent; always nice to see fewer copyright assignments and CLAs in the world.

richardfontana7• 10 years ago

Agreed. Cygwin was the only surviving project arising out of Red Hat to use copyright assignment, Red Hat having maintained Cygnus's late-1990s-vintage copyright assignment policy without substantive change until now. (The text of the Cygwin copyright assignment is actually adapted from the form used by the FSF in the 1990s.)

However the project will not be adopting an "inbound=outbound" or DCO contribution policy until 2020. This is because Red Has some continuing license-related obligations to existing "buyout license" customers that the mere license change to LGPL does not address. In 2020 the last of those obligations will have ended.

What the project will be doing going forward, until 2020, is requiring contributions to be made under the 2-clause BSD license. It's a sort of symbolic change during that interim period, although the end of the red tape around contributing to Cygwin will be generally appreciated.

gumby5• 10 years ago

Excellent; always nice to see fewer copyright assignments and CLAs in the world.

I am the origin of the blanket assignments (among other things -- Cygnus founder). The purpose of the blanket assignment was to ensure that the FSF would have standing to sue in the case of a GPL violation. If you only contribute a small amount it might not matter (because any material violation probably would include other, covered code) but if you end up contributing a somewhat self-contained module or function it does.

Now, more than 25 years later, it's less of a problem, and something somewhat unitary like the Linux kernel survives with many many copyright holders, but for something smaller like Cygwin it makes more sense. I guess rhat figured it wouldn't matter any more -- hope they're right!

JoshTriplett2• 10 years ago

I wonder if the new Linux compatibility subsystem for Windows provided any motivation for this change? That work seems likely to make Cygwin obsolete eventually, since it allows running unmodified applications rather than porting them.

rcarmo• 10 years ago

I'm going to oversimplify a bit, but unmodified applications cannot have a native GUI or break out of the Linux Subsystem sandbox (other than network connections).

You can cheat using VNC to localhost, of course ;)

I have it installed, and still rely on Cygwin for projects that live on my Windows directory.

digi_owl• 10 years ago

Or run a xserver on Windows.

daurnimator• 10 years ago

Coming soon: http://midipix.org

richardfontana7• 10 years ago

No, this change was being contemplated over a year ago and the final internal decision was made before the announcement of that Linux compatibility subsystem. It has more to do with the commercial viability of Cygwin as a product.

namtrac• 10 years ago

I sincerely hope Red Hat continues to develop Cygwin further. It's amazing to be able to run my favourite shell on Windows.

ktRolster4• 10 years ago

I'm guessing it was because of pressure from Mingw. A few years ago, Cygwin was the only option, and Mingw was a real pain to use. Now with Mingw becoming more and more mature, I'll bet people were using that instead of Cygwin.

geofft5• 10 years ago

One big difference between Cygwin and the Linux subsystem is that Cygwin runs Win32 processes, under the Win32 subsystem, so the entire Windows API is available to you. The Linux subsystem (like the Subsystem for UNIX Applications before it) is a separate set of concepts on top of the raw NT system calls, so you get a GNU/Linuxish API instead of the Windows API. With Cygwin you get a GNU/Linuxish API as well as the Windows API.

See, for instance, this discussion about how copy-on-write fork is available as a system call (and had been around for a while, to support SUA), but doesn't work right with the Win32 subsystem, and that means Cygwin can't use it:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsdesktop/en-U...

I don't know how many actual applications take advantage of this, though. But if they do, then Cygwin is definitely not obsolete for them.

JonathonW• 10 years ago

The Linux subsystem also runs unmodified Linux binaries-- with WSL, you can (theoretically) run any piece of software compiled for 64-bit Linux, which gives you access to everything in Ubuntu's package manager (Ubuntu's the only distro they ship right now). With Cygwin, programs have to be recompiled for Cygwin, which means you're restricted to programs that are either already in Cygwin's package manager or that you can compile yourself.

As you mention, WSL also isn't stuck with the restrictions that come from Win32 compatibility. One of the big impacts of this is that fork() can be faster (although I'm not sure if it actually is right now) than the mess that is Cygwin's emulated fork(). There are some more subtle distinctions, too, though: for example, WSL maintains Linux's conventions around locking open files and has full case-sensitivity. Cygwin doesn't even try to simulate Linux's behavior for either of those; it maintains Win32's behavior.

Sir_Substance• 10 years ago

With Cygwin you get a GNU/Linuxish API as well as the Windows API.

Genuine question, why is that useful? Intuitively, it seems like if you ever used that capability, you'd end up with a horrible chimera program that can't run on linux or windows, which doesn't seem good.

skrowl• 10 years ago

One thing that I didn't see mentioned here that I'd like to point out (again) is that the Ubuntu on Windows stuff is CLIENT ONLY aimed at developers.

Microsoft has said that they have no plans to push it to / support it on their Server OSs. If you're planning on SERVING something with Windows + Linuxy stuff on top of it, Ubuntu on Windows is not an option.

AdmiralAsshat• 10 years ago

So does this mean that we'll expect to see a commercial version of Cygwin in the future? Or is it so that commercially available programs can leverage Cygwin libraries?

richardfontana7• 10 years ago

Red Hat has had a commercial Cygwin offering (not a different version from the project) ever since the Cygnus acquisition, but this is now being phased out (no new customers will be taken on, and the last existing non-GPL customer license expires in 2020). It is possible that companies other than Red Hat may wish to offer commercial support for Cygwin or some derivative of Cygwin.

The license change does have the effect of making it easier for programs to leverage the Cygwin library without concern about licensing implications. I wouldn't quite say that is the purpose, but if only because Red Hat will no longer be providing commercial support for Cygwin the license change is the right thing to do. (I think there are additional reasons why the license change is right.)

parent5446• 10 years ago

Kind of disappointed to hear this, although at least they did not switch to a permissive license.

What I'm still not sure is why they are dropping copyright assignment. Don't the same litigation problems exist when using LGPL, or is there something I'm missing?

richardfontana7• 10 years ago

The main reason, I'd say (at least by the time of the Cygnus acquisition) the only reason, for copyright assignment for Cygwin was to ensure that Cygnus/Red Hat was the sole GPL licensor. Thus Cygnus/Red Hat, and only Cygnus/Red Hat, could offer alternative for-fee license arrangements. This was the basis of the business model. Copyright assignment isn't the only means of achieving that result with a GPL-licensed project, but it was the traditional technique and probably the soundest from a legal perspective.

Red Hat is phasing out this commercial model for Cygwin. Hence single-licensor GPL licensing is no longer necessary or, I'd say, appropriate. It has nothing directly to do with litigation issues in any general sense. By 2020, I expect that all contributions to Cygwin will be made under the LGPL, meaning that there will potentially be a diversity of LGPL licensors in contrast to the situation prior to today where there was one GPL licensor.

djsumdog• 10 years ago

I hear you on this. I'm currently working on a writeup about the history of open source and the GPL.

The dream of having totally free and open replacements for major tools like Photoshop never really happened. There is a lot of new OSS, but it's all BSDL, Apache, MIT and other license.

I'm not like a hard core Stallman person. I don't run libre-firmware laptops from pre-2008 and I enjoy my Gapps on my phone, but I'm not a big fan of startups/monetization of everything. I think a lot of good ideas are strangled by making them commercially viable.

Cygwin going LGPL allows it to be more widely used, but overall we're going to see less OSS apps as a result.

cyphar2• 10 years ago

I hear you on this. I'm currently working on a writeup about the history of open source and the GPL.

If you're going to write up a history, please use the term "free software". "Open source" didn't exist for a large part of the history of the free software movement (and I would argue that it was a movement to sabotage discussions about freedom).

The dream of having totally free and open replacements for major tools like Photoshop never really happened. There is a lot of new OSS, but it's all BSDL, Apache, MIT and other license.

It did though. Okay, Photoshop is still not overtaken by GIMP. But we have professional free software video editors, development tools, web and database servers, document writers, etc. These days you can run a modern system entirely in freedom, though of course we would love to make more free software to do things even better.

I'm not like a hard core Stallman person. I don't run libre-firmware laptops from pre-2008 and I enjoy my Gapps on my phone, but I'm not a big fan of startups/monetization of everything. I think a lot of good ideas are strangled by making them commercially viable.

I'm slowly becoming one, and the main reason why is because I want to work towards the world I want to live in. Sure, lax licensed software is fine to use as a free software advocate. But when I develop free software under a lax license, I'm acting against the free software world I want to live in. By allowing proprietary versions of my software to exist, I am acting against my goals.

I want to live in a world where all of the software I need to use is free. All of the hardware that runs updatable software also must be free. Otherwise, I'm powerless when the developers' company decides to do something immoral. Having code under the GPLv3 protects us from both of these things, and it makes me sad when people use lax licenses for innovative work.

mappu• 10 years ago

This means consumers will probably end up having multiple cygwin1.dll files on their system (something the FAQ warns about).

civodul• 10 years ago

Is Red Hat suggesting there are no "commercial opportunities" with Linux, Wordpress, GCC, FFmpeg, etc., which are under the GPL?

Cygwin library now available under GNU LGPL

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