> The Debain association is not in any way perceived as a an embedded > systems competitor to Cygnus. > The software produced by the Debain Association is not > "primarily intended" for use in embedded systems. You are missing one important distinction - the Debian system is designed to be the base for other distributions. So if Debian built a "Linux on Win32" distribution based on your winsup code, and one of your competitors used it -- that would be legally problematic for everyone. [Please don't take the following as a flame - it's just my personal opinion about Cygnus's business strategy] I can't really see how you (Cygnus) can balk at releasing cygwin32 under the LGPL due to "competitive pressures", and still justify the amount of real dollars they are spending on continued development of gdb, gcc, and other projects. I can't help but think that Cygnus is going to try to "corrupt" the licenses of those too (to protect yourself from competition). Any software company that is going to play the "Free Software" game has to play by the rules. You've got to demonstrate that your company has enough development expertise on staff that you don't require proprietary licenses -- that you'll always stay one step ahead of the competition since you're just plain better. If you don't believe that you can do that - then you're going to need proprietary licenses to prop you up. "Free Software" (in quotes, as defined by RMS and the GPL/LGPL) has some built-in safeguards to prevent it from being mixed with the proprietary stuff. So it's best to pick one business strategy or the other - not both - or you're going to find yourself "hung up on the fence". Other software companies have to live with FUD (Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt) because Microsoft creates it for them. In Cygnus's case, you're creating it for yourself. Duh. Cheers, - Jim
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