[GRASS-dev] gis.m patch

[Hamish]

Huidae Cho wrote:
> > > No, not yet.  Since the native winGRASS runs on MSys, users need
> > > to install various MSys/GnuWin32 packages as well as GRASS.  I
> > > want to distribute a whole system including MSys/GnuWin32
> > > binaries, but I'm not sure about license issues related to
> > > redistribution.  It looks like most of packages are under GPL
> > > licenses, so can I?  It could be really annoying for non-techy
> > > users to choose right packages from their sites (it's not like
> > > Cygwin).

Glynn:
> > Most of the packages you are likely to need will allow bundling with
> > GRASS in a single installer or archive.
> > 
> > The only case which might be problematic is if you are using
> > ActiveState Tcl/Tk; the licencing conditions for that looked like
> > they might be problematic, so I've been using the standard Tcl/Tk
> > packages built from source instead.

Huidae Cho wrote:
> Then the MSys version should be fine?

MSys is put out by MinGW, and the the first sentence of www.mingw.org
reads "MinGW: A collection of freely available and freely distributable
Windows specific header files and import libraries combined with GNU
toolsets that allow one to produce native Windows programs that do not
rely on any 3rd-party C runtime DLLs."

further, the "G" in MinGW is GNU.... we can't get much more free
software than that.

http://www.mingw.org/licensing.shtml

says the MinGW specific parts are placed in the public domain.



but to be sure I've just downloaded the MSys source code.
in msys/1.0/10/rt/src there is:
COPYING (the GPL)
COPYING.LIB (the LGPL)
CYGWIN_LICENSE (the GPL + non-viral clause for linking software)

and...

========================================
File:                MSYS_LICENSE
Copyright (C):       2001, Earnie Boyd  <earnie at users.sf.net>
File $Revision:       $
File Revision $Date:  $
MSYS Release:        1.0.2
MSYS Release Date:   November 30th, 2001

The software, both source and binary forms, are covered via differing
licenses. Each license has it's own set of rules so please make sure you
read them carefully to see how it applies to you, particularly if you're
going to distribute the software.

The MSYS runtime software source can found in the winsup/cygwin
directory. The existing code portions of this source is covered by the
CYGWIN_LICENSE which can be found in this directory in a file by the
name of CYGWIN_LICENSE. MSYS specific software code added regardless of
existing license is covered by the ESPL which can be found in a file by
the same name.
========================================

There is no ESPL file there, but a web search found something called the
"EcoSpold Public License v1.0 (ESPL 1.0)".  I've asked on the MSys
mailing list for this to be fixed/clarified. As it only affects "MSYS
specific software code" [whatever that means], I guess it doesn't apply
to us.



Hamish