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What is free software?

In this release, we’ve assembled the most current editions of these software development tools, tested them, made sure they work well together, and made them easy to install. The installation tape comes with binaries already compiled for your system, and we’ve made them easy to reconfigure and recompile from source.

These tools are free software; they are part of the GNU project, produced by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). GNU (pronounced “Guh-new” is the name of the FSF’s evolving operating system. Cygnus Solutions collaborates with the FSF in developing these tools. For more information on the relationship between Cygnus Solutions and the FSF, please see Cygnus Solutions and the FSF.

Cygnus Solutions exists to help our clients exploit their freedom in using, adapting, or enhancing this software. Cygnus products are free software, protected by the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL gives you the freedom to copy or adapt any program it licenses—but every person getting a copy also gets with it the freedom to modify that copy (which means that they must have access to the source code), and the freedom to distribute further copies. Traditional software companies use copyrights to limit your freedoms; the GPL is designed to preserve your freedoms.

Fundamentally, the GNU GPL is a license which grants you these freedoms, and only imposes restrictions to ensure that no one can take these freedoms away from anyone else. For full details, see GNU General Public License in Legal Notices in GNUPro Advanced Topics , or the file, COPYING, in the source code distributed with GNUPro Toolkit, info.

If you find our GNUPro Toolkit distribution useful, please feel free to give or sell copies of the software and documentation to anyone you like.