From: Lasse C. <las...@tu...> - 2010-01-30 23:42:16
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Hi! According to <http://mingw.org/license>, MinGW runtime is in the public domain. This gives me an impression that if I distribute binaries linked against MinGW runtime, I'm not legally required to include any copyright or license information about MinGW runtime. However, the source package mingwrt-3.17-mingw32-src.tar.gz has copyrighted files, that seem to end up in the final runtime in compiled form. A couple of build system files from Autoconf are copyrighted too, but these don't go into the compiled library, so their copyright status shouldn't affect the compiled runtime. For example, most files in mingwex/gdtoa and mingwex/pformat.c are copyrighted by Lucent Technologies or David M. Gay. Those files are under a permissive license (qnan.c has slightly different version of this license though): Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that the copyright notice and this permission notice and warranty disclaimer appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of Lucent or any of its entities not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. LUCENT DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL LUCENT OR ANY OF ITS ENTITIES BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. IANAL, but this license doesn't sound similar enough to actual public domain, because it requires that all copies of the code include the copyright notice and a copy of the license text. I understand it so that the requirement applies to both source and binary forms, but I may be wrong. gdtoa functions seem to be used by the printf() implementation, thus many applications built with MinGW may be affected by the licenses of the gdtoa files. mingwex/math has many files from Cephes Math Library. These files include a copyright notice but no license text at all. The package downloadable from <http://www.moshier.net/#Cephes> includes a readme file that contains the following notice: Some software in this archive may be from the book _Methods and Programs for Mathematical Functions_ (Prentice-Hall, 1989) or from the Cephes Mathematical Library, a commercial product. In either event, it is copyrighted by the author. What you see here may be used freely but it comes with no support or guarantee. It sounds vague, but <http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/12/msg00295.html> gives an impression that the author could be willing to give an explicit permission to distribute those files e.g. under a BSD style license. So probably there is no problem here, although it could be good to get a permission from the author and then add a license into the Cephes files in MinGW runtime. s_erf.c in mingwex/math has the following notice: Copyright (C) 1993 by Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Developed at SunSoft, a Sun Microsystems, Inc. business. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software is freely granted, provided that this notice is preserved. sf_erf.c has a similar notice where SunSoft has been replaced with SunPro. I don't know if that notice should be included when distributing binaries, but it may be safest to do so. It would be nice if <http://mingw.org/license> would make it clear what copyright and license notices should be included when distributing binaries linked against MinGW runtime. A separate text file containing all the required notices would be optimal, since it could be easily included as is when distributing binaries. -- Lasse Collin | IRC: Larhzu @ IRCnet & Freenode |