February 2002 - Wine-devel - list.winehq.org

RE: Wine, enthusiasts, businesses and the agony of the license
by vinn 09 Feb '02

09 Feb '02

IANAL, yada, yada [nor can my involvement with Wine be considered anything more than minor] Patrik wrote: > Companies in this group have several choices: > 1. Don't use new improvement in the main Wine tree, only resync > then a new major version of the application should be released. > 2. Maintain a tree by themselves, continually resyncing in order > to make even minor version take advantage of new improvements > in the new Wine tree. I just want to throw a couple of ideas out about using an LGPL license. There's a lot of people with a heck of lot more at stake than me, and ultimately they deserve to have their opinions weighed more heavily than mine. Ultimately these ideas stem from the practice of licensing software rather than the theory (which is where this thread was headed). First, the LGPL doesn't really ever give a time frame for modifications to be released back. We can safely assume that it means "in a timely manner", since in practice this is how it works. I think we could collectively agree that a company such as Transgaming could be allowed a grace period in order to submit their modifications back. Whether this is a week or a year can be debated. If for no other reason than to ensure clean code. Now you may argue that a year is too long, but keep in mind that the modifications do have to be released, and if it takes them a year the amount of work required for a resync may impact other operations. Second, the LGPL doesn't state how the modifications have to be released. In practice this is done electronically via patch files or access to a modified tree. But there's no reason why the modifications couldn't be released on handwritten post-it notes available by request only. In this manner there is a non-trivial amount of work required to integrate the changes. ------ Brian Vincent vinn(a)theshell.com

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something to do
by Jason Phillips 09 Feb '02

09 Feb '02

Hello everyone, I'm interested in doing some work on the wine project. There's quite a few bugs in the bug list are any in particular that someone would recommend as a good place to start? I might need to document for my own good also. Any guidelines on what/how that should be so it can be contributed? Jason Phillips

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RE: Wine, enthusiasts, businesses and the agony of the license
by Patrik Stridvall 09 Feb '02

09 Feb '02

> On Sat, Feb 09, 2002 at 11:40:54AM +0100, Fredrik Ohrn wrote: > > Another observation is that companies in group 1 are in > direct competition > > with each other, so they want closed source. If TransGaming > released their > > DirectX work BSD style, Lindows would quickly be there to > appropriate it. > > You miss one case here: Companies in group 1 that also want > to make money > with group 2s business model. They could do that easily and > it would give > them a distinct competitive advantage over the group 2 only > type enterprises. > Result: The group 2 only companies *can't* release their > sources any more > if they want to stay in business. I'm not sure that I follow you. Groups 2 companies (like Corel) have one or more Windows application that are likely to be their primary source of income. How can group 1 (like CodeWeavers and Transgaming) companies compete with that? Sure they can compete other group 1 companies to get contract with the group 2 company. If the application was DirectX based I can imagine that Transgaming are likely to give a better bid. But I don't see how they compete with the group 2 company. And in the example above I'm sure that Gavriel according to his promises will release any non-DirectX related stuff he had to do in order to fulfill the contract and if group 2 company is nice perhaps they might even require him to release some of the DirectX related code.

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RE: Dr. Seuss, licensing, and WINE
by Patrik Stridvall 09 Feb '02

09 Feb '02

> If people don't understand that some people are decent and > contribute back > regardless of whether they are forced to or not, but others > are not and > require a feedback loop to force this behavior, then they > don't understand > how the world works and we're just wasting time. That is not one of the problem, as far as I'm concerned I fully agree that there will be companies that will be, how should I put it, less honourable. There ALWAYS are in ALL markets. As I sidenote I would like to say that I believe that the LGPL for reasons stated in last debate will not be enough to stop less honourable companies from doing less honourable thing. You might believe me or you might not, as all people arguing against me last time. Be that as it may, that discussing is dead and I will in the future concentrate on "If the LGPL means what you say it does, we don't want the LGPL". > I think it's more of an issue of people thinking too much in > black/white > terms and people that lean strong towards one side or the other. Yes. Perhaps they are not nessarily thinking in black and white but their arguments are often presented that way. I'm not entirely blameless on that point either, I will try to do better in the future. > Look no further than the US political system for a good > example. You have > the Republicans and the Democrats. Generally they take every > issue to > opposite ends of the extreme such that 99% of congress is at > one extreme > or the other, but 99% of the population wants neither extreme. Exactly, but that is because: 1. They want votes so they can do that they feel is right. 2. The ignorant masses are not likely to understand subtle differences in opionion. When the voters give any of them support, the problem is that they didn't really support the extreme views they presented, but they are forced to do it anyway in order of not being accussed of betraying the will of the voter. In the cases of Wine. I hope that the people working with the Wine project are not among the ignorant masses and thus really are able to understand the subtle differences between different positions. > Essentially we could go on forver about X11/BSD vs. GPL. It's been > discussed to death already folks. What we need are reasonable > compromises. Of course you need to have people willing to > compromise to > do that. I suspect most developers are with the exception of > the view > vocal BSD people and the few vocal LGPL all the way people. > I myself am > certainly not at either extreme. Even if perhaps some people won't believe me. I not really an extremist. I try to take a pragmatic view of the world. I believe that GPL has its place, LGPL has it place and the BSD license has its place. However my analysis of the issues at hand makes me believe that LGPL would be really bad in the particular case of Wine, for reasons that I have tried to explain. I suggest that people try to think about scenarios of circumstances where possible extensions to Wine might be made. This might be business models like Transgaming or Lindows.com or just something Joe Hacker or Joe Ex-Windows-Shareware-Writer or Joe I'm-Conspiring -With-A-Proprietary-Library-Company-But-You-Can't-Prove-It are doing. Just like the examples in the my last mail. Then ask the questions: 1. Do you consider his or her behavior morally or ethically defendable? 2. Does it violate the letter of the LGPL? 3. Does it violate the spirit of the LGPL? 4. Does it violate the letter of copyright law? 5. Does it violate the spirit of copyright law? 6. Do you think any reasonable Judge/Jury would find him or her guilty? With the spirit of copyright law I roughly mean: Is it what congress intended and/or is it constitutional? Notice the and/or: It is possible for act of congress to be constitutional without being the intention of the congress.

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Re: Dr. Seuss, licensing, and WINE
by Roger Fujii 09 Feb '02

09 Feb '02

Steve Langasek <vorlon(a)dodds.net> wrote: > Jeremy White, the man who posted the request for feedback that spawned > this discussion, the developer who is encouraging the Wine community to > adopt the LGPL, works for a company whose principal software product > (though not their only source of revenue) is a bundled package of a piece > of proprietary glue code and Wine functionality. > > Let me repeat. The person recommending the LGPL to us sells a proprietary > program built on top of Wine as part of the business model for his > company. if you are going to follow this line of reasoning, you have to ask jeremy whether or not the crossover plugin would have been written IN THE FIRST PLACE if wine was LGPLed at the time. I really think that LGPL would have at least *some* impact on the decision, which is why there is opposition - it impacts future contributers. > Now, do the people arguing that the LGPL would destroy all chance for > people to make a profit believe that Jeremy is stupid, or out to get you? I'll agree that the Brett overstated the case by saying "impossible". But it does make it very difficult and the thrust of the argument is sound. Even though I'm not too sure if codeweaver's business model is too sound (no flames please), but the request for LGPL makes sense because an LGPLed wine now would deny future competitors (even if they contribute) the advantage that they had. -r

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Wine License change: Open question to Jeremy White
by Roland 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Quote from Jeremy White: "However, with some recent events I cannot disclose, it is clear to me that the opportunity for Wine to be used in a proprietary product is too tempting and has caused some harm to the Wine project. Based on experience, I feel strongly that the potential for harm is great enough that CodeWeavers needs to take two actions. First, we would like to release all new code we develop under an LGPL style license. Second, I would like to open another call for a license change and thereby strongly add my voice to Alexandre's." Obviously you, Jeremy started this discussion. I don't want to sound curious, but I have the feeling that our discussion will be in vain if we don't know about those "events" you can't disclose. I mean suppose that the list reaches a consensus to stay at the BSD license. This wouldn't make a difference would it? You would simply say, sorry: but I have my reasons which I can't disclose and will start a xGPL fork of WINE now... So I think to consider all interests involved we must obviously first KNOW what they are specifically...otherwise we will just be wasting time without touching the really important points(your specific concerns among others...). Best regards, Roland

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RE: Wine license change
by Patrik Stridvall 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

> I think that this message as well as many other bring up some > very good > points as to the needs of licensing within the wine project. > Many other > messages have been clearly in the realm of bsd-gpl feudalism. > I think that trying to find a license to fit the needs of the project > without first having a good understanding of the needs of the > project is a > serious error. Yes, that is what I have tried to say in my reply to Jeramy. We must define what we want to license to protect, but more importantly we must define what the we DON'T want the license to protect. Because "What doesn't the license protect?", more popularly known as "What can we get away with?" is the first question ALL new business models will ask. If the answer of that question is "Not Much" it might be very bad for most business module, but even worse if the answer to the question is "I don't know, it depends on your intent" or "I have no idea, the jury is still out" it will be very bad. >From my discussion with Alexandre last time he seems to believe that whether or it was allowed to implement a few function in some DLL in a LGPL Wine by linking to a proprietary library depended on my intent. I reject this absurd idea most violently. However consider for a moment: What if he is right? This means that with a LGPL:ed Wine: If somebody that had some proprietary library and thought hey with this library it should be quite easy to implement these functions in Wine that prevented these cool application to work. Some programming later... Great it works... Now I call Lindows, Red Hat, SuSE (whomever that distribute Wine) and tell them that I can license this library for $5 per end user to you. Some time later... Great at least some them accepted and the money keeps streaming in. Life is good. Questions: Is his intent bad? Would you sue him for violating the LGPL? If he publish his proprietary library function wrappers under the LGPL. If he didn't? What about the Linux distributor? Under what circumstances would you sue it? Another scenario: Joe Hacker has bought a proprietary library to use with his non Wine related hobby. One day he realizes that the one of his hobby related also proprietary Windows application he dual boots to since it never worked under Wine could be made to work by implementing the missing Wine functions with that library. He does so, it takes a weekend. It works. He puts out the patch to Wine under LGPL on a hobby related website for other that also owns the application and the library. He is happy since dual booting is but a memory. Life is good. Questions: Is his intent bad? Will you sue him? If some months or so later the maker of the protrietary library finds the patch and contacts the Linux distribution like in the case above. Will you sue the him, the proprietary library company or the Linux distribution? All this begs the questions: 1. Isn't it so, that as I claimed that the LGPL really doesn't protected this. 2. Or alternatively, if it really does make what some of the people above do illegal, do we REALLY want to use it? > It's pretty obvious that neither the a gpl > license nor a bsd > license are optimal. It only take the observation of the lack > on consensus > to see it. Quite. > All that I can really offer is this suggestion: end feuding > and start a > process to > 1. Gather the requirements to the licensing of the wine project > 2. Determine if any combination of existing licenses can meet the > requirements > 3. If no combination of existing licenses will suffice, write > a license > that does. Fully agree. > Additionally, I advise that everyone abandon there preconceptions of > licensing. There is no mandate that I know of to license the > whole project > under the same license, only use one license for any part of > the project, > only use existing licenses, license any part of the project > to different > groups under the same license. Quite true. However, take care with viral licenses, they might spill over to the other parts all the same.

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Licensing
by Joe Tennies 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

I have personally always been a huge fan of the BSD license. It has always seemed to me to be more about standards. I know you guys are angered about TransGaming making their WineX version, but get over it. TransGaming is more than willing to place code back into the community. They are just making sure they can cover their own asses too. With the current state of open-sourced companies and internet companies in general, I think they have a decent plan. Also, switching to the LGPL will not make it impossible for TransGaming to make WineX. This has been discussed on the SDL list lately. All you need to do to make a closed source version of a LGPL library is have the LGPL library make calls into a closed source library. The theory behind the LGPL is fairly simple. Make sure that the LGPLed library can be recompiled if one of its dependancies either stops being made or changes dramatically. Basically, it's there to make sure things link 5 years from now. This will probably be my last message to this list as I am dropping it and going to the Mono project. Have fun!

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Re: Wine license change
by g.russell＠ieee.org 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

I think that this message as well as many other bring up some very good points as to the needs of licensing within the wine project. Many other messages have been clearly in the realm of bsd-gpl feudalism. I think that trying to find a license to fit the needs of the project without first having a good understanding of the needs of the project is a serious error. It's pretty obvious that neither the a gpl license nor a bsd license are optimal. It only take the observation of the lack on consensus to see it. All that I can really offer is this suggestion: end feuding and start a process to 1. Gather the requirements to the licensing of the wine project 2. Determine if any combination of existing licenses can meet the requirements 3. If no combination of existing licenses will suffice, write a license that does. Additionally, I advise that everyone abandon there preconceptions of licensing. There is no mandate that I know of to license the whole project under the same license, only use one license for any part of the project, only use existing licenses, license any part of the project to different groups under the same license. Thanks for you ear - Gabriel Russell g.russell(a)ieee.org >Look at the copy protection stuff that transgaming have added to their >tree: they licensed it and thus quite likely can't publish the source >for this - but I still want to see this in the binary only releases >they make :-) Other scenarios I can imagine: drivers for hardware - >think of a company that wants to port their software to Linux via wine >but continue using a dongle or something like that: the dongle code >is quite likely to go into the kernel itself (and may need some support >for that by the wineserver). > Ciao > Jörg

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Undocumented functions: a digest
by Jeremy White 08 Feb '02

08 Feb '02

Thanks to everyone who sent me examples of undocumented information; I have passed that along; I think it will be very helpful. I was hoping to edit it, and make it a bit more definitive, but I seem to have run out of time. So, I thought I'd just post the raw replies here so it didn't vanish into the bit bucket. Cheers, Jeremy

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