I'm planning to use mingw-w64 for commercial software and I'm looking for info about it's licensing. I was looking through licenses included in package and some discussions on forums and mailing lists and I'm still not quite sure if I can use this compiler for my purpose.
Mingw-w64 with default settings requires you to include three dll's with them:
- libstdc++-6.dll
- libgcc_s_seh-1.dll
- libwinpthread-1.dll
Am I allowed to distribute those files with my own software which would be licensed under my own (commercial) license?
Also, can I link those libraries statically? I was looking through some licenses and I found this file, specifically this quote:
These don't apply to the binaries built with
MinGW-w64 unless you specifically tell MinGW-w64 to link against
these parts, for example, by enabling profiling code.
In addition to the notices in this file, also the notices in
COPYING.MinGW-w64-runtime.txt apply to MinGW-w64. Some (possibly
all) notices in that file may apply also to the binaries built with
this version of MinGW-w64. The idea is that if you create binary
packages of your software with MinGW-w64, you can simply copy
COPYING.MinGW-w64-runtime.txt into your package to fulfill the
license requirements of the MinGW runtime.
Which suggests that if I'm building binaries based on mingw-w64 ones, I have to provide this file with my software, which contains those lines at the end:
Disclaimer
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
Lesser General Public License for more details.
I'm assuming that it refers to software that I've created, which would mean that I have to distribute my software under GNU LGPL license. Does that mean for me that i have to link this dynamically through dlls in order to keep my own commercial license?