Cygnus Support and the Free Software Foundation cooperate on major projects, such as the port of the GNU development tools to Solaris 2. We look forward to continuing such cooperation in the future.
Cygnus maintains many programs and libraries for the FSF: G++, GDB, GAS, the linker, GPROF, the binary utilities, LIBG++, and the Binary File Descriptor libraries. In addition, Cygnus and the FSF share sources for other programs on a regular basis.
Both Cygnus and the FSF agree that free software is the best way to meet the industry's technical needs. However, Cygnus and the FSF have different missions. Cygnus, as a for-profit company, concentrates on meeting its customers' needs. The FSF concentrates on meeting the internal needs of the GNU project.
Therefore, Cygnus may not accept into our source tree certain FSF changes until they are reworked into a form acceptable for our customers' needs--for example, changes that reduce performance or reliability on the software platforms we support. Conversely, the FSF may not accept changes from Cygnus that improve support for only a limited group of users (Cygnus customers).
Also, Cygnus sometimes supports non-FSF code. Our C subroutine library is an example. The FSF's version carries licensing restrictions which are impractical for customers who write code for embedded systems; as a result, we developed our own subroutine library, LIBC. The Cygnus C subroutine library, although also freely redistributable, does not carry the licensing restrictions that would inconvenience these customers.
Finally, although the FSF makes every effort to provide high-quality releases, its development requirements take priority. The FSF regards software testing as the user community's contribution to the GNU project. Cygnus releases go through a quality assurance cycle which is in large part driven by our knowledge of customer requirements.