- E02 - Support for MinGW Open Source Compiler

[Stephen Kellett]

In message <1108398011.213872.321390 at o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>, Pat 
<pobrien at orbtech.com> writes
>Wow!  I must say, I'm less than impressed with the responses so far.  I
>know Ilias can give the impression that he is just trolling, but I can
>assure you he is not.  At least, not in this case.  ;-)

He deserves what he gets. He appears to put no effort in, other than to
o Write his own document for his own needs that no one else is 
interested in
o Answer people's comments to him in a way that does not demonstrate he 
has put any effort in.
o Based on his answers it seems pretty clear to me (and it seems many 
others) that he has not put any effort in and has no intention of doing 
so.

>In addition, there are some unresolved licensing questions concerning
>the .NET runtime file for extensions (msvcr71.dll):

To quote that URL;
<QUOTE>
The 2.4 python.org installer installs msvcr71.dll on the target system.

If someone uses py2exe or a similar tool to create a frozen application,
is he allowed to redistribute this msvcr71.dll to other users together
with his application or not, even if he doesn't own MSVC?
</END QUOTE>

msvcr71.dll is a redistributable for applications written using their 
compiler. You can redistribute that. If that answer is not good enough 
for you there is now a free version of Microsofts Visual Studio called 
Visual Studio Express (downloadable from the Microsoft's website). This 
DLL is (to my understanding) part of Visual Studio 7.1 and Visual Studio 
Express.

No licensing problem exists. Microsoft will not get upset about 
msvcr71.dll being distributed. They will if you distribute msvcr71d.dll 
though - don't do that!

I'm not a lawyer, so take this as you would any other free advice and 
download Visual Studio Express and read the redistribution sections in 
the license/help file to verify. Alternatively search msdn.microsoft.com 
for "redistributable".

Look at this from Microsoft's perspective - Python is a language that 
can be used on Windows operating systems. msvcr71.dll is required to 
make some versions of Python work. Microsoft are not stupid - they know 
that to encourage uptake of their OS they shouldn't put needless 
restrictions on certain technology - the C runtime being on of those 
technologies. It is in Microsoft's own best interests to allow 
msvcr71.dll to be used for Python.

>users.  I can't expect them to purchase a .NET compiler or go through a

See above.

Regards

Stephen
-- 
Stephen Kellett
Object Media Limited    http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk
RSI Information:        http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk/rsi.html