mingw-users

Re: [Mingw-users] gcc forks on Windows (was re: repository for Open Source Windows)

[Earnie <ea...@us...>]

Garrett Serack wrote:
> Sorry for the late reply... I joined the mailing list, and then the next day I went out of town for two weeks (China&  Canada).
>
>>> Presumably he is doing his work on CoApp with the full knowledge and
>>> approval of his superiors, at least a few steps up the chain.
>
> Indeed... I have support of my superiors all the way up to our Corporate VP for Windows Server, whom I got signoff for CoApp directly.
>

Nice to hear.  I knew that Microsoft was supporting Open Source ventures 
of some of its products.

>>> ... ask him whether he could try to persuade Microsoft to release the
>>> headers for at least the C libraries and the core Win32 API ...
>
> I could begin to find out what it would take... I suspect this is a long road to walk down...  I will start poking folks this week.
>

Thanks for that.  We would still need, though, to have a fully 
distributable by our downloaders set of code.  The issue is satisfying 
the GPL need to distribute code.  If the SDK was bundled with every 
Windows distribution it would become a non-issue.  Or if the SDK was 
allowed to be distributed by everyone, it would be a non-issue.

> Off the top of my head, I do have a couple of thoughts in this regard:
>
> - Does anyone know if other C/C++ compilers (like Watcom, Borland, etc) ever redistributed the SDK headers? If they licensed them for redistribution, the easiest path may be getting the same type of license they used--assuming of course that we could get it zero-fee.
>

Borland does.

> - Since the SDK is free to download... you might look at it from another direction: have the installer download the SDK ISO file, and extract the files that you need (or some other automation that gets you what you want).
>

This doesn't work for the GPL requirement either.  The SDK needs to give 
the right of redistribution to its users.

-- 
Earnie
-- http://www.for-my-kids.com

Re: [Mingw-users] gcc forks on Windows

[Ralf W. <Ral...@gm...>]

* Charles Wilson wrote on Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 03:40:29AM CEST:
> But the REAL problem -- 64 bit support -- is somewhat religious in nature.
> 
> The mingw team feels strongly that the runtime library and SDK (headers
> and such) MUST be completely public domain, developed entirely from
> publicly available documentation and NEVER, EVER, contain anything
> copied from the Windows SDK.
[...]
> I am not a lawyer. You are not a lawyer. And nobody around here is
> paying any lawyers on behalf of mingw.org.  So...we choose to play it
> safe.  mingw64 chooses a somewhat looser path.

So what if somebody were to pay a lawyer for this issue?  Do we have an
estimate on the money it would need?  Would an opinion from a lawyer in
the end have a chance of reconciling things?

No, I don't have a big pocket, but MinGW is a popular project, and
whether it's getting one of the bigger distributors or free software
entities who have lawyers interested, or collecting donations from
users, there might actually be resources out there to make use of.

Cheers,
Ralf