Robocopy in XP - Advice

[jfitty]

Hey guys,

I'm looking for a bit of advice. I am writing an Autoit program that copies files and uses the Windows command "Robocopy" to do this. On Vista, its fine because the command is built into the operating system, whereas in XP it's not, but can easily be downloaded and added to the OS. My program does this, I have made it so that at the start of the program it installs the Robocopy command to the temp directory (using FileInstall), uses it, then deletes it after the program finishes. My question is, if I wanted to sell my program, could I run into any licensing issues in using Robocopy in XP this way?

Thanks in advance

[Authenticity]

According to this topic which I think is quite correct. Nothing in the tools kit EULA denote or explicitly states that it's allowed to redistribute any of the tools (including Robocopy.exe) so seems like you can't. If you'll read the thread however, it's legal to download the kit and install it. If you'll find a download only of this tool it wouldn't be a problem because you can download once and use it. Otherwise, you'll need to download the entire kit which is 11.8MB according to the download page which is a bit annoying. Make sure you show the EULA to the user.

[jfitty]

Do you think it would be okay to use xcopy and just call it in the program? Because its already installed in XP

[Authenticity]

Yes. You can first check if the system is WIN32_NT (both Vista and XP are WIN32_NT) and then see if the file exists before trying to use xcopy Robocopy.exe (zzz). Both systems has the xcopy program by the default.

Edited October 18, 2009 by Authenticity

[jfitty]

Thats okay, thanks heaps for the replies. The other option I could take is finding an open source solution that can do similar things to robocopy. Would anyone know of any?