Naveed Hasan wrote:
> Editing the XWin.exe 6.8.2.0-4 binary for fun and profit.
> http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~naveed/CygwinX
While I can appreciate that building X11 from source might be difficult
and painful, this is really not a good solution at all.
Most importantly, this won't fix the bug in future releases. A proper
patch will do much more good in the long term, compared to a one-time
hack.
Additionally, you are violating the GPL because you offer binaries with
no source code. It is not sufficient to say "you can get the source
code from any Cygwin mirror", you have to offer it on the same place as
the binaries. Even if you were offering unmodified binaries you would
still be obligated to host a copy of the source code.
As a thought experiment as to why this is so, consider if in 5 years
time someone stumbles onto your site, downloads your binaries, and then
wants the source. But suppose that the source for this version is no
longer available on the Cygwin mirrors, or perhaps the Cygwin project
has disbanded entirely. You are now unable to fulfill this request
which is a direct violation of the license. This is why the GPL states
that you cannot rely on third parties to make the source available. It
is a technicality, but it is also a very common mistake.
Brian
--
Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/
FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
