Clarification on my call for license change
Several people have asked me to clarify my original post. I apologize for not replying sooner; to be honest, I have been hoping that the flames would die down, and I was very reluctant to fan the flames in any way. Further, I'm not sure if I have anything to add other than kindling. But, I don't mean to 'hide', so here goes. First of all, let me say that my call for a change was not based on a single mysterious event. It was triggered by an event that I cannot discuss due to a confidentiality agreement. More important, it is a culmination of a number of events and disturbing trends which I can freely discuss. We've already discussed the concern with the InstallShield related patches of Transgaming; I won't belabor that now. But doesn't it bother anyone else that Marcus spent 5 weeks redoing work that they already had? Wouldn't you rather be able to better play Monkey Island instead? I have always felt that in order for Wine to progress, it was important that changes to Wine be returned to the Wine project. It has always been clear to me that if everyone returns the work, in the long run, everyone benefits. So, with each and every one of my major customers over the past three years, I have had a major, knock down, drag out fight over licensing. I have always insisted that changes we make to Wine be returned to Wine. This has meant (while in a sales situation) explaining the complexities of BSD versus GPL licenses. Wine still requires huge capital investments to make it work, and any company that is going to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars is naturally going to demand ownership of the resulting work product. It it were LGPL, it would be an easy negotiation - I'd just say "Sorry, can't do it." End of story. I know that the naysayers will jump on this and say "Oh, but then you wouldn't have had any customers, they would have been scared away by the LGPL." To this I respond very simply: bullshit. I was there for each of these sales processes, and each customer was primarily interested in the end result, not in the nitty gritty license details. There is an analogy I recall from when I took a physics and public policy class. If a physicist stands up and says "It's a bad idea to build chemical weapons" nobody will listen to the physicist's opinion - they just get a different physicist to do the dirty work. If, instead, she stands up and says "It won't work. The inverse poleron field conclusively prevents that." There is no more debate, and public policy moves on to protecting chickens from acid rain or something else. So, my business is threatened, because CodeWeavers is trying to be the best physicists in town. If I, as a matter of principle, refuse to work on chemical weapons, I lose business because my customers hire different physicists who will build chemical weapons. Okay, let me drop the analogy and come back to straightforward facts. If I believe in the LGPL, and release all of my code to WineHQ under the BSD despite that, then I am a fool. Transgaming, Lindows, name your new competitor, each of them can take the best of my work and use it in their product. I'm sure Transgaming doesn't have any problem using any of the great new Window management code or Window messaging code we wrote. In fact, the InstallShield 6 stuff wouldn't be *possible* without that code. However, if I had it to do over again, I would not have released that code under the BSD license. So, I think there are several fundamental problems: 1. The current license encourages forks. We have the WineX fork; I think that Lindows is still formulating their strategy, but they have publicly stated that they like having some proprietary pieces, this certainly suggests another fork of Wine. You can argue that the pain of maintaining a separate fork is so great, and the work of merging in the BSD code is so hard, that people will just naturally contribute their code back. We do merges of six month drifts on a regular basis; it's just not that painful (the last one took Francois 2 days; the resulting bug fixes probably took 3 or 4 days). If this argument held any water, then Transgaming would have just been forced to contribute the Direct3D and IS6 support back. 2. The current license discourages competitors from releasing their code. Since I believe in the LGPL, but compete with Transgaming and Lindows, contributing my code under the current license is like giving my competitors my very best and getting nothing in return. You know, the concept of making money on Free software is crazy enough without enabling your competitors into the mix. And, much as Gav and I are friends, we do compete. I have been in sales situations with embedded customers where gaming expertise was required. Now, Gav has the best of what I can do, and I have little or none of what Transgaming did. In hindsight, if I had it to do over again, I would have held out all code we had done over the past year or two. Where would Wine and Transgaming be if we had done that? 3. The current license is harmful to the growth of Wine, because it creates a murky, uncertain ground. This is true for a lot of reasons. First, I think we all sort of kind of hope that any corporate Wine citizens will follow some sort of unwritten ethical code of conduct. That is, we'd like the corporate citizens to pitch in and help Wine to grow. Having unwritten rules is foolish, IMO. The current license specifies: go ahead and do anything you want - we don't care. But I think we do care (*I* care). So corporate citizens spend all their time worrying about this middle ground of perception (how much time do you think this debate is taking away from my people, and the Wine hacking they could do?) Well, a Copyleft license provides potential corporate citiziens with written rules. Second, it clarifies the code issues. Right now, say I wanted to work on a game. Well, gosh, just how should I do that? Should I work against the WineX tree? But if I do that, I can't really talk about it on wine-devel, and I can't really share my work with others. Ah heck, maybe Transgaming will fix my game. I'm just going to reboot over to Windows. And if you don't think that's a serious problem, just look at the Wine project historically. Over the past five years, game related patches have overwhelmingly dominated wine-devel. Over the past 12-18 months of Transgaming? Virtually dead. Add to that the new problem of CodeWeavers now being unwilling to contribute their code under the current license. In my opinion, all the developers will just throw up their hands and go work on something else, and I think that would be a great tragedy. I hope that helps. Looking back on this, I see nothing but kindling. If you want to raise a point or an argument that is a variation on something we've heard before, just don't. And if you're not a contributor to Wine, please don't respond at all. You can flame me privately. Or go find a different mailing list. I would really prefer to hear only what Wine contributors think about this. Jeremy p.s. For the record, in my mind, Dan Kegel qualifies as a major contributor to Wine. It is through his hard work that we have a chance that the U.S. court system will put into place systems that will make Wine development easier and protect Wine from predatory action from Microsoft.
Jeremy White wrote:
Okay, let me drop the analogy and come back to straightforward facts. If I believe in the LGPL, and release all of my code to WineHQ under the BSD despite that, then I am a fool. Transgaming, Lindows, name your new competitor, each of them can take the best of my work and use it in their product....
So, I think there are several fundamental problems:
1. The current license encourages forks.
We have the WineX fork; I think that Lindows is still formulating their strategy, but they have publicly stated that they like having some proprietary pieces, this certainly suggests another fork of Wine.... 2. The current license discourages competitors from releasing their code.... In hindsight, if I had it to do over again, I would have held out all code we had done over the past year or two. Where would Wine and Transgaming be if we had done that?
3. The current license is harmful to the growth of Wine, because it creates a murky, uncertain ground. ... Having unwritten rules is foolish, IMO.... Well, a Copyleft license provides potential corporate citiziens with written rules.
Second, it clarifies the code issues. Right now, say I wanted to work on a game. Well, gosh, just how should I do that? Should I work against the WineX tree? But if I do that, I can't really talk about it on wine-devel, and I can't really share my work with others. Ah heck, maybe Transgaming will fix my game. I'm just going to reboot over to Windows.
And if you don't think that's a serious problem, just look at the Wine project historically. Over the past five years, game related patches have overwhelmingly dominated wine-devel. Over the past 12-18 months of Transgaming? Virtually dead....
Well said. Jeremy has laid out a powerful argument for the switch to LGPL, and even why Transgaming ought to support it.
p.s. For the record, in my mind, Dan Kegel qualifies as a major contributor to Wine. It is through his hard work that we have a chance that the U.S. court system will put into place systems that will make Wine development easier and protect Wine from predatory action from Microsoft.
*blush* Aww, thanks! - Dan
At 08:19 AM 2/15/02 -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
Several people have asked me to clarify my original post.
I just don't understand one thing: How does your company expect to make money once WINE is xGPLed? If all your code has to be contributed back, why should I buy it from your company? Best regards, Roland
On Fri, 2002-02-15 at 09:49, Roland wrote:
At 08:19 AM 2/15/02 -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
Several people have asked me to clarify my original post.
I just don't understand one thing: How does your company expect to make money once WINE is xGPLed? If all your code has to be contributed back, why should I buy it from your company?
Well, for one, we have a proprietary product that links to Wine; we would continue to sell that. For another, we would continue to sell services to organizations who wish to use Wine, but can't because it isn't complete enough. And finally, we would sell services to organizations that need to depend on Wine, but cannot do so without the assurance of qualified support to back up that dependence. Jeremy
On 15 Feb 2002 08:58, Jeremy White wrote:
On Fri, 2002-02-15 at 09:49, Roland wrote:
At 08:19 AM 2/15/02 -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
Several people have asked me to clarify my original post.
I just don't understand one thing: How does your company expect to make money once WINE is xGPLed? If all your code has to be contributed back, why should I buy it from your company?
Well, for one, we have a proprietary product that links to Wine; we would continue to sell that.
Why hasn't this already been GPL'd? Sean -------------- scf(a)farley.org
On Fri, 2002-02-15 at 14:35, Sean Farley wrote:
On 15 Feb 2002 08:58, Jeremy White wrote:
On Fri, 2002-02-15 at 09:49, Roland wrote:
At 08:19 AM 2/15/02 -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
Several people have asked me to clarify my original post.
I just don't understand one thing: How does your company expect to make money once WINE is xGPLed? If all your code has to be contributed back, why should I buy it from your company?
Well, for one, we have a proprietary product that links to Wine; we would continue to sell that.
Why hasn't this already been GPL'd?
Here's the 'official' rationale... http://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover/the_real_dirt.php#j Jer
Several people have asked me to clarify my original post. I just don't understand one thing: How does your company expect to make money once WINE is xGPLed? If all your code has to be contributed back, why should I buy it from your company?
Hi, Companies will pay because they want certain functionality to be implemented that isn't there. For example, let's say you are company Foo, who wants their product "FooBar for Windows 2000" to work in Linux using WINE. It makes use of some COM related functionality not currently in WINE (like Out-of-proc objects or something) What do you do? I mean, you can't just post on wine-devl and say "hey guys, stop making patches for DirectX, we want you to fix this COM stuff and NOW!" No way. Do you get your internal staff to do it? Maybe. However, most likely none of them know anything about WINE, so there is a big ramp up time. Or do you hire an outside company to help you out, a WINE developer-for-hire so to speak. That's why companies like Macadamian and CodeWeavers get hired by clients, to get functionality into WINE that would otherwise not get done. It allows the client to focus the fixes in the areas they need for their particular application. Sure, these changes (optionally for BSD license, "required" for GPL) are made available to competitors, but as far back as I remember and for a while yet I imagine any moderately complex app will always require some fixes to WINE to get it to work perfectly. -James -- James Hatheway james(a)macadamian.com ~ http://www.macadamian.com Software Designer - Macadamian Technologies, Inc. -- Software experts for the world's leading technology companies. Obligatory Geek Expression: "Save the Whales, Free the mallocs!"
Roland wrote:
I just don't understand one thing: How does your company expect to make money once WINE is xGPLed? If all your code has to be contributed back, why should I buy it from your company?
The same way many companies work also with their properiteary code. You know your code needs a feature but you don't have the time for implementation because you have no customer who says he really needs it. Of course many customers may be gald to have it, but none is willing to pay for it. The someday a customer turns up who says he needs that stuff badly and he wants to know how much you charge for it. Then you implement that feature, you might have implemented anyway some day, and once it is available you can give it to all your customers, or you can charge a price that others are willing to pay even though they wouldn't have paid the develeopment price. I worked for a company that worked exactly that same way and this works also for GPL code as well.
On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 08:19:44AM -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
Wine still requires huge capital investments to make it work, and any company that is going to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars is naturally going to demand ownership of the resulting work product. It it were LGPL, it would be an easy negotiation - I'd just say "Sorry, can't do it." End of story.
Just to throw another wrench into the works... If Codeweavers is the only party releasing Wine code under the LGPL, then Jeremy's licensing fight with clients doesn't get any easier (at least if he's being honest with them ;D), because as the sole copyright holder on the LGPLed code, Codeweavers' hands are not tied by any legal strings when it comes to relicensing. So there is significant benefit to Codeweavers /and/ to the Wine community if an LGPLed Wine tree thrives: both sides get the benefit of Jeremy having to spend less time arguing licensing points with his clients. When less time is spent arguing over licenses, more time is available for productive coding. Since Jeremy has stated his intention to release future code changes only under Copyleft, the decision for Wine contributors to make is a simple one: do you believe that the benefits of potential additional corporate, closed-source adopters of Wine outweigh the certain loss of code contributions from Codeweavers, a known active contributor? Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
On 2002.02.15 11:12 Steve Langasek wrote: [SNIP]
Since Jeremy has stated his intention to release future code changes only under Copyleft, the decision for Wine contributors to make is a simple one: do you believe that the benefits of potential additional corporate, closed-source adopters of Wine outweigh the certain loss of code contributions from Codeweavers, a known active contributor?
Well said. While I don't want to put-down other contributors to Wine, CodeWeavers has contributed an extremely significant amount of code to Wine. Wine has gotten better by leaps and bounds lately and much of this is due to the contributions of CodeWeavers. And what wasn't done by CodeWeavers themselves was likely made possible because of work that CodeWeavers did. CodeWeavers has breathed a lot of life into this project. A year or two ago there wasn't a prayer in hell of running much of anything and at the pace development was going at Wine might be closed to finished sometime after Microsoft reveals the successor to .NET (yeah, you read that right). At the current pace Wine looks like it may very well be finished by the end of the year. By finished I mean that we'll actually have a stable version 1.1 that runs most off the shelf applications. It is a dream of mine that one day I can stop saying: well, Linux is actually pretty good on the desktop but you still can't run Windows applications. I'd much rather say: Linux is good on the desktop, you can still run your legacy Windows applications, and new Linux programs can take advantage of all that POSIX goodness :-). Anyway, the bottom line is that regardless of what the Wine developers decide, CodeWeavers has every right to make an LGPL tree. Given the choice of CodeWeavers releasing no code at all, or releasing under the LGPL, which do you prefer? If this happens, a developer could choose to contribute to either the official Wine tree or the CodeWeavers LGPL tree or possibly to both. My guess is that the LGPL tree will thrive and most everyone will forget about the official tree except for those that absolutely require an X11'd Wine. And if this happens, what's to stop Alexandre from saying the hell with this official tree, I'd rather go maintain the one with real promise. Of course since the official tree is Alexandre's the previous official tree then becomes unofficial and the LGPL tree becomes official. The second outcome is that the official Wine tree could become LGPL and those who want an X11 licensed Wine will more than likely fork and make their own tree. But what happens then.. same outcome, Alexandre maintains the official LGPL tree, everyone develops on it because it's the only tree worth anything, and the X11 tree is forgotten except by those entities who require the X11 licensed tree. Personally, I'd rather see the official tree just become LGPL and let the others maintain their own X11 tree. Or we can go about it the hard way. Of course all of this is assuming that the LGPLed tree will advance faster than the X11 tree. Given the contributions of CodeWeavers alone I think the LGPLed tree will advance much faster. This is ignoring any arguments that development will surely be better with the X11 license or surely be better with the LGPL license which we all could argue about until we're blue in the face. The bottom line is that if the biggest contributor to the project wants to go LGPL then you can bet their tree will be better. -Dave
At 09:02 PM 2/15/2002, David Elliott wrote:
Given the choice of CodeWeavers releasing no code at all, or releasing under the LGPL, which do you prefer?
[SNIP]
The bottom line is that if the biggest contributor to the project wants to go LGPL then you can bet their tree will be better.
This sounds very much as if you would like to allow CodeWeavers to determine the entire future of the project regardless of what anyone else thinks. Is this correct? Yes, CodeWeavers has contributed quite a lot of code to WINE. But it is not clear that CodeWeavers, with its current business model, is likely to remain in business no matter what license WINE uses. And, ironically, there are compelling arguments that CodeWeavers is likely to go under faster if the (L)GPL is adopted. Why? Because the company will no longer be able to serve its clients' best interests. Instead, it will have to disclose to potential clients (at least if it's being honest) something like the following: "Because WINE is licensed under the LGPL (thanks to us), and the code we write for you will be licensed under the LGPL, all of your competitors will be able to take advantage of the code even though you're footing the bill for its development. We won't do anything for you that gives your product an exclusive feature or some other competitive edge. Good luck in the marketplace!" I do not think that this would get CodeWeavers many customers. So, they'll either have to lie, withhold material information (i.e., fail to disclose the full implications of the (L)GPL), or lose the lion's share of their business. Thus, the most likely outcome is that CodeWeavers will go belly-up. I hate to seem like a prophet of doom, but unless they're snatched up by someone like Red Hat this is the most likely prognosis. (Red Hat is likely to fail in the long term as well, but due to its large market cap it will take longer to exhaust investors' money.) No rocket science here -- just basic business principles. Worse still, if it is allowed to determine the license by fiat, CodeWeavers will leave great damage behind. It will have irreparably consigned WINE to a license that will forever limit its application. IMHO, this is not at all a good way to go. If one looks forward rather than backward, it's quite clear that WINE should remain under a truly free license. --Brett
ARGH!!! Why am I sending this.. I /SHOULD/ know better than to feed a troll!!!! I dunno, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em (goatse.cx link included :-). On 2002.02.16 04:51 Brett Glass wrote:
At 09:02 PM 2/15/2002, David Elliott wrote:
Given the choice of CodeWeavers releasing no code at all, or releasing under the LGPL, which do you prefer?
[SNIP]
The bottom line is that if the biggest contributor to the project wants to go LGPL then you can bet their tree will be better.
This sounds very much as if you would like to allow CodeWeavers to determine the entire future of the project regardless of what anyone else thinks. Is this correct?
Brett, I don't have to allow them to do anything. With your blessed BSD license they have every right to create an LGPL fork already. I am only stating the obvious. If CodeWeavers uses its rights under the BSD license to relicense under LGPL then even if no-one else developed on their LGPLed tree, chances are it would still work better than the BSD tree. If the rest of the developers see this, my guess is they'll just start developing on that tree as well. Why reinvent the wheel when LGPL is at the very least a reasonable license for everyone except for you. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: We won't cry if you don't contribute.
Yes, CodeWeavers has contributed quite a lot of code to WINE. But it is not clear that CodeWeavers, with its current business model, is likely to remain in business no matter what license WINE uses.
And, ironically, there are compelling arguments that CodeWeavers is likely to go under faster if the (L)GPL is adopted. Why? Because the company will no longer be able to serve its clients' best interests. Instead, it will have to disclose to potential clients (at least if it's being honest) something like the following:
"Because WINE is licensed under the LGPL (thanks to us), and the code we write for you will be licensed under the LGPL, all of your competitors
will be able to take advantage of the code even though you're footing the bill for its development. We won't do anything for you that gives your product an exclusive feature or some other competitive edge. Good luck in the marketplace!"
I do not think that this would get CodeWeavers many customers. So, they'll either have to lie, withhold material information (i.e., fail to disclose the full implications of the (L)GPL), or lose the lion's share of their business.
Brett, you obviously haven't read any of Jeremy's mail. If you did you didn't understand it or couldn't/didn't believe it. Jeremy has stated that he already requires that his contracts give any code he does back to Wine as if Wine were LGPL. If this is your tired-old argument that no-one could possibly write non-(L)GPL software having looked at LGPL/GPL code you can go turn it sidewise and shove it right up your ass. See http://www.goatse.cx/ for an example. Wait.. I think that's down, try http://www.conhugeco.org/goatse.cx/ for an even better example (link found via Google(tm)). You'll notice that that page contains detailed pictures of how this can be accomplished.
Thus, the most likely outcome is that CodeWeavers will go belly-up. I hate to seem like a prophet of doom, but unless they're snatched up by someone like Red Hat this is the most likely prognosis. (Red Hat is likely to fail in the long term as well, but due to its large market cap it will take longer to exhaust investors' money.) No rocket science here -- just basic business principles.
Great, but chances are that even if CodeWeavers does go belly up by the end of the year they will have mostly finished Wine before doing so.
Worse still, if it is allowed to determine the license by fiat, CodeWeavers will leave great damage behind. It will have irreparably consigned WINE to a license that will forever limit its application.
True, but CodeWeavers won't be forcing outsiders to develop on their LGPL fork, it's just what will logically happen.
IMHO, this is not at all a good way to go. If one looks forward rather than backward, it's quite clear that WINE should remain under a truly free license.
Only in your mind. Almost everyone else has expressed that they really don't care one way or the other. And the number of people who would rather go LGPL seems to far outwheigh the few that absolutely would not want LGPL. And furthermore assuming the "votes" are weighted according to contribution, then your vote at best has a factor of 0 and at worst has a negative factor because you have done nothing but waste everyone's time with your repeated ill-conceived arguments that have added absolutely nothing to the discussion. -Dave
On Sat, 16 Feb 2002, David Elliott wrote:
ARGH!!! Why am I sending this.. I /SHOULD/ know better than to feed a troll!!!! I dunno, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em (goatse.cx link included :-).
This is the only way I know to deal with 2 entities each of which has to have the last word: :0: * ^From:.*brett(a)lariat /gp/pine/gas :0: * ^From:.*ps(a)leissner /gp/pine/gas You can substitute /dev/null if you like. Lawson Probable user head space error. - Dennis A. Moore
Hi: I might have to do that to get rid of the annoying arrogance. I don't even want to see the replies to their messages. Got any tricks for that?? I haven't contributed any code so I will not state my opinion (but you can guess that) hehe. On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 lawson_whitney(a)juno.com wrote:
On Sat, 16 Feb 2002, David Elliott wrote:
ARGH!!! Why am I sending this.. I /SHOULD/ know better than to feed a troll!!!! I dunno, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em (goatse.cx link included :-).
This is the only way I know to deal with 2 entities each of which has to have the last word:
:0: * ^From:.*brett(a)lariat /gp/pine/gas :0: * ^From:.*ps(a)leissner /gp/pine/gas
You can substitute /dev/null if you like.
Lawson
Probable user head space error. - Dennis A. Moore
On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 mawali(a)news.icns.com wrote:
Hi: I might have to do that to get rid of the annoying arrogance. I don't even want to see the replies to their messages.
Got any tricks for that??
Well, if everybody does it pretty soon there won't be any replies. If you need a quicker solution you could filter on Subject or Cc or To, I guess.
I haven't contributed any code so I will not state my opinion (but you can guess that) hehe.
Lawson
I haven't contributed any code so I will not state my opinion (but you can guess that) hehe.
Ah, but if I read the issues correctly, that isn't the problem! If the LGPL license were in force it would matter whether you had READ any of the code. If you see a small fragment of code in LGPL source (even something relatively trivial like some odd list handling routine) and later write the same (or very similar) code in some commercial software, the LGPL license might be construed to apply to the entire commercial software product - there is no way this is acceptable. David
Since copyright applies to expression and not algorhyms, I don't see how this 'brain pollution' argument applies unless the programmer concerned has a photographic memory. On Sunday 17 February 2002 11:23, David Laight wrote:
I haven't contributed any code so I will not state my opinion (but you can guess that) hehe.
Ah, but if I read the issues correctly, that isn't the problem! If the LGPL license were in force it would matter whether you had READ any of the code.
If you see a small fragment of code in LGPL source (even something relatively trivial like some odd list handling routine) and later write the same (or very similar) code in some commercial software, the LGPL license might be construed to apply to the entire commercial software product - there is no way this is acceptable.
David
Jeremy White wrote:
We've already discussed the concern with the InstallShield related patches of Transgaming; I won't belabor that now. But doesn't it bother anyone else that Marcus spent 5 weeks redoing work that they already had? Wouldn't you rather be able to better play Monkey Island instead?
Wine is a _re_implementation .. 90% of the code we write is double work, triple work sometimes .. It doesn't bother me that we had to rewrite something, since after all that is what we do.. Wouldn't we have it easy is Microsoft would just release their source? The real question is, if Wine was GPL'd would TransGaming have written the DCOM code in the first place? Daniel Walker
On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 11:45:13AM -0800, Daniel Walker wrote:
Jeremy White wrote:
We've already discussed the concern with the InstallShield related patches of Transgaming; I won't belabor that now. But doesn't it bother anyone else that Marcus spent 5 weeks redoing work that they already had? Wouldn't you rather be able to better play Monkey Island instead?
Wine is a _re_implementation .. 90% of the code we write is double work, triple work sometimes .. It doesn't bother me that we had to rewrite something, since after all that is what we do.. Wouldn't we have it easy is Microsoft would just release their source? The real question is, if Wine was GPL'd would TransGaming have written the DCOM code in the first place?
Someone would have sooner or later (most likely later) due to the immense pressure on getting IShield v6 running. Ciao, Marcus
Daniel Walker wrote:
Wine is a _re_implementation .. 90% of the code we write is double work, triple work sometimes .. It doesn't bother me that we had to rewrite something, since after all that is what we do.. Wouldn't we have it easy is Microsoft would just release their source? The real question is, if Wine was GPL'd would TransGaming have written the DCOM code in the first place?
That depends on the calculation of TransGaming what they could do with it. If they just coded it to have it, probably not. If other things are depending on it which brings money probably yes. If they had someone who has paid for it, then most surely yes. Of course still the question arises wether they choose to release it or not under any given szenario. :)
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Daniel Walker wrote: [...]
Wine is a _re_implementation .. 90% of the code we write is double work, triple work sometimes .. It doesn't bother me that we had to rewrite something, since after all that is what we do.. Wouldn't we have it easy is Microsoft would just release their source? The real question is, if Wine was GPL'd would TransGaming have written the DCOM code in the first place?
No, the real question is whether Transgaming would have written the DCOM code if CodeWeavers had not released its typelib code in the first place. Because it seems to me that one of the main arguments of the BSD proponents is that we are stupid and that we should have kept all the code for ourselves. Maybe they are right. But which of the following two scenarios leads to the more healthy Wine and Wine marketplace? * The one where we released our window-management code, did dll separation work, added cross-process handle support, added cross-process messaging, released our typelib code (essential for InstallShield/COM support), released our true-type support, improved winelib and released countless bug fixes. * Or the one where the public Wine has none of the above (unless new volunters had magically sprung up out of thin air). Where would the first scenario, which appears to be what BSD proponents advocate, leave the Wine community? Which one do Transgaming and Lindows prefer? Do they really prefer not to benefit from any of our code in the future? The Wine competitive landscape has changed a lot in the past year, and I believe that it is unpractical for us to continue releasing all our code under the current license. We could definitely turn our Wine proprietary but as the above scenario illustrates this would be bad for the Wine community, including for our competitors; even if they don't realise it. And I believe that all Wine companies need a thriving open-source Wine. That's why I think it is important for us (Wine community + CodeWeavers + Transgaming + Lindows) to find a better solution. (disclaimer: yes, I am a CodeWeavers employee even if it is not obvious from my email address, no, this may not represent my employer's opinion, etc, etc. again, see my email address) -- Francois Gouget fgouget(a)free.fr http://fgouget.free.fr/ Cahn's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 16:48, Francois Gouget wrote:
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Daniel Walker wrote: [...]
Wine is a _re_implementation .. 90% of the code we write is double work, triple work sometimes .. It doesn't bother me that we had to rewrite something, since after all that is what we do.. Wouldn't we have it easy is Microsoft would just release their source? The real question is, if Wine was GPL'd would TransGaming have written the DCOM code in the first place?
No, the real question is whether Transgaming would have written the DCOM code if CodeWeavers had not released its typelib code in the first place.
Would CodeWeavers have written its typelib code if others had not created Wine? No. Wine was not written originally for financial gain, was it? If people make money off of something I do for free without desire of capitalizing on it, I do not see a problem.
Because it seems to me that one of the main arguments of the BSD proponents is that we are stupid and that we should have kept all the code for ourselves.
No one is claiming you are stupid. We may disagree, but that does not infer stupidity on others. Some on both sides may see the opposition as ignorant, but that does not mean stupid.
Maybe they are right. But which of the following two scenarios leads to the more healthy Wine and Wine marketplace?
* The one where we released our window-management code, did dll separation work, added cross-process handle support, added cross-process messaging, released our typelib code (essential for InstallShield/COM support), released our true-type support, improved winelib and released countless bug fixes.
* Or the one where the public Wine has none of the above (unless new volunters had magically sprung up out of thin air).
Where would the first scenario, which appears to be what BSD proponents advocate, leave the Wine community? Which one do Transgaming and Lindows prefer? Do they really prefer not to benefit from any of our code in the future?
If they never had written it, would you have? Were you planning to? Was anyone going to write it? If any of these were yes, why did they stop? If I knew I was not going to have access to something, I would have just filed that away in my mind as non-existent and continued with my project.
The Wine competitive landscape has changed a lot in the past year, and I believe that it is unpractical for us to continue releasing all our code under the current license. We could definitely turn our Wine proprietary but as the above scenario illustrates this would be bad for the Wine community, including for our competitors; even if they don't realise it. And I believe that all Wine companies need a thriving open-source Wine. That's why I think it is important for us (Wine community + CodeWeavers + Transgaming + Lindows) to find a better solution.
CodeWeavers does not sell a proprietary version of Wine. Correct? Revenue comes in from the service of writing code. Correct? How does it harm CodeWeavers to not have access to someone else's code? If a company needs it, you could just charge them for it. Correct? There was a comment about the phone companies in the U.S. a few years back concerning there dislike of people using modems too much and over-using the phone system. It was basically that the phone companies were the only companies known to complain about having too much demand. If you need to write more code as a service to another company, I see an opportunity to make more money. Sean -------------- scf(a)farley.org
On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 08:03:16PM -0600, Sean Farley wrote:
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 16:48, Francois Gouget wrote:
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Daniel Walker wrote: [...]
Wine is a _re_implementation .. 90% of the code we write is double work, triple work sometimes .. It doesn't bother me that we had to rewrite something, since after all that is what we do.. Wouldn't we have it easy is Microsoft would just release their source? The real question is, if Wine was GPL'd would TransGaming have written the DCOM code in the first place?
No, the real question is whether Transgaming would have written the DCOM code if CodeWeavers had not released its typelib code in the first place.
Would CodeWeavers have written its typelib code if others had not created Wine? No. Wine was not written originally for financial gain, was it? If people make money off of something I do for free without desire of capitalizing on it, I do not see a problem.
Actually you just can read up on earlier debates on google: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=GPL+group:comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine Interesting is the year 1996 and this thread I think: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=de&threadm=58iip6%241an%40imp.serv.net&rn... And especially: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=de&selm=1szq0fy8sm.fsf_-_%40lrcsuns.epfl.... Ciao, Marcus
On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 10:11, Marcus Meissner wrote:
On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 08:03:16PM -0600, Sean Farley wrote:
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 16:48, Francois Gouget wrote:
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Daniel Walker wrote: [...]
Wine is a _re_implementation .. 90% of the code we write is double work, triple work sometimes .. It doesn't bother me that we had to rewrite something, since after all that is what we do.. Wouldn't we have it easy is Microsoft would just release their source? The real question is, if Wine was GPL'd would TransGaming have written the DCOM code in the first place?
No, the real question is whether Transgaming would have written the DCOM code if CodeWeavers had not released its typelib code in the first place.
Would CodeWeavers have written its typelib code if others had not created Wine? No. Wine was not written originally for financial gain, was it? If people make money off of something I do for free without desire of capitalizing on it, I do not see a problem.
Actually you just can read up on earlier debates on google:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=GPL+group:comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine
That first post explained the general feeling I have: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=GPL+group:comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine&h...
Interesting is the year 1996 and this thread I think: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=de&threadm=58iip6%241an%40imp.serv.net&rn...
And especially: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=de&selm=1szq0fy8sm.fsf_-_%40lrcsuns.epfl....
Interesting. I definitely agree with Alexandre. You definitely did your homework. :) Sean -------------- scf(a)farley.org
On Sat, 16 Feb 2002, Marcus Meissner wrote:
And especially: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=de&selm=1szq0fy8sm.fsf_-_%40lrcsuns.epfl....
OK, What about this: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Ingo+Molnar+group:comp.emulators.ms-window... or this: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Ingo+Molnar+group:comp.emulators.ms-window... -- Dimi.
On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 12:06, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
On Sat, 16 Feb 2002, Marcus Meissner wrote:
And especially: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=de&selm=1szq0fy8sm.fsf_-_%40lrcsuns.epfl....
OK,
What about this: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Ingo+Molnar+group:comp.emulators.ms-window...
Linus's quote was quite interesting: I don't personally contribute - partly because of the same worries that Ingo Molnar brought up some time ago, ie the copyright. It's not that I dislike the wine copyright - I actually think that the BSD-style copyrights can be a good thing. But _personally_ I don't want to do significant work under that kind of copyright and having to wonder whether the best version of Wine will be free in the future.. That was almost the same as Brett's message concerning working on Wine if it was xGPL'd.
or this: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Ingo+Molnar+group:comp.emulators.ms-window...
This made me wonder about what happened to TWIN. I noticed they faded away. If anyone thinks xGPL'ing WINE will bring more support, they should look at TWIN. I am not saying the license killed it, but I am saying that the LGPL did not bring it any support. Sean -------------- scf(a)farley.org
Sean Farley wrote:
This made me wonder about what happened to TWIN. I noticed they faded away. If anyone thinks xGPL'ing WINE will bring more support, they should look at TWIN. I am not saying the license killed it, but I am saying that the LGPL did not bring it any support.
I don't even know about TWIN but the licence is surely NO insurance for a given project that it will die or strive.
On 2002.02.17 02:50 Sean Farley wrote:
On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 12:06, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
On Sat, 16 Feb 2002, Marcus Meissner wrote:
And especially:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=de&selm=1szq0fy8sm.fsf_-_%40lrcsuns.epfl....
OK,
What about this:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Ingo+Molnar+group:comp.emulators.ms-window...
Linus's quote was quite interesting:
I don't personally contribute - partly because of the same worries that Ingo Molnar brought up some time ago, ie the copyright. It's not that I dislike the wine copyright - I actually think that the BSD-style copyrights can be a good thing. But _personally_ I don't want to do significant work under that kind of copyright and having to wonder whether the best version of Wine will be free in the future..
That was almost the same as Brett's message concerning working on Wine if it was xGPL'd.
Almost, but not quite. Brett's quote seemed more like he was trying to hold it over our heads like "See, I won't contribute if you go LGPL and you'll lose all the wondeful commercial developers like me!". Linus's quote was more like "I won't contribute if you're not under a copyleft, but I have no vote so take that as nothing more than my opinion". Then it was left at that, there was no ongoing argument for a week about it. Linus was certainly more tactful. In other words, I took Brett's attitude as being hostile towards the project from the beginning but when I read Linus's comments there was no hostility involved. Maybe it is just that Linus is a better writer.
or this:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Ingo+Molnar+group:comp.emulators.ms-window...
This made me wonder about what happened to TWIN. I noticed they faded away. If anyone thinks xGPL'ing WINE will bring more support, they should look at TWIN. I am not saying the license killed it, but I am saying that the LGPL did not bring it any support.
I am about 99% sure that TWIN was released under LGPL after Willows had no interest in it whatsoever. Back in the day Codeweavers did a lot of projects by combining Twin and WINE into "Twine" and using that to do ports. So Jeremy is certainly no stranger to using an LGPLd Wine-like project for his business. -Dave
participants (17)
-
Brett Glass -
Dan Kegel -
Daniel Walker -
David Elliott -
David Laight -
degs -
Dimitrie O. Paun -
Francois Gouget -
Gerhard W. Gruber -
James Hatheway -
Jeremy White -
lawson_whitney＠juno.com -
Marcus Meissner -
mawali＠news.icns.com -
Roland -
Sean Farley -
Steve Langasek