- Wine-Devel - list.winehq.org

RE: Dr. Seuss, licensing, and WINE
by Patrik Stridvall Feb. 9, 2002

Feb. 9, 2002

> > 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". > > > Actually, IYRC, and IIRC, I pretty much agreed with you that the LGPL > actually WOULD allow one to implement proprietary code simply > by releasing > small wrapper functions as LGPL code. Yes, but you was one of the few. Alexandre in particular seemed to believe it depended on some strange notation of whether it was intentional or. > As in: > > DWORD WINAPI FooMicrosoftApi(CHAR *bar, DWORD baz) > { > return someotherdll_FooMicrosoftApi(bar,baz); > } > > Which would be LGPL, and the someotherdll_FooMicrosoftApi > would be under a > different license. > > With this situation the stated purpose of the LGPL is still > upheld. The > stated purpose is to allow one to continue to update the > parts of the code > that are LGPL while still being able to link with proprietary > components. Exactly. However I see no reason particular reason why even less honourable companies wouldn't release the wrapper code to the us whether they were forced to or not. It is in their intrest to make it easy for Wine to use their library so they can limit the support for clueless users for example. This even if LGPL allowed it, is not a strong argument for LGPL. In this case it would only primarily the confusion on whether this is allowed, for little gain. > Thus TransGaming does not hurt. Lindows really doesn't hurt > either, and > the users of Lindows win because should they need to update the LGPL > components of Wine they can do so and still continue to link > to Lindows > binary only components. Exactly, but they will be able to do that without the LGPL. It is in the respective companies intrest to make it so. > Now you may consider this not enough to stop the less honourable > companies. Yeah, you're right. Lindows can continue to > build upon wine, > add their own stuff, and release a product. The only > difference is that > now they can't just fold all the wine code into the binary.. > they have to > allow the user to update the wine code. That is the purpose > of the LGPL. > Unlike the GPL which tries to make all software free > software, the LGPL > tries to keep free software as free software, and proprietary > software as > proprietary software. Yes. But that is NOT an argument for using LGPL as I have said above. > Now let's say we take the stricter interpretation that you > cannot do the > above. That is bad I think. > > How about going to LGPL and add a clause that clarifies that > the above is > in fact allowed? Why confuse the company lawyer even more? Even if I would be inclined to agree, I would rather let the FSF lawyers draw up a completely new license lets call it, hmm, MGPL (Middleware GPL), for use in, hmm, what should I call it, say two-ended libraries that Wine IMHO really is. This MGPL should clarify that it is legal to "plug-in" proprietary application/libraries in both ends while code the middle that is the Wine source code should have some copyleft like protection and additional that sublicening the code as LGPL is allowed. Note however I'm not really proposing this but it might be a reasonable compromise. Perhaps something for the LGPL camp to chew on. > > > 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. > > > You can thank the "liberal" media for that one. :-( Well, that is just the symptom. The ignorant masses are the real problem IMHO. Unfortunately, there is no serious alternative to democracy, so I'm a loss what to do. :-( Lets return the easy problem of finding of good license for Wine. :-) > Especially see MSNBC. What a crock of shit that is.. > figures, it being a > MS product and all :-). The reporters on that station are > just horrible. > They ask a question and when they get a totally straight > answer that they > don't agree with they just ask it again and again changing a > few words to > make it seem like it's a different question. Well, people watch the shit, so they get what the deserve. Unfortunately it hurt us other as well, but then we really can't limit their freedom of speech, can we? > > 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. > > > Yeah, so far it only seems like the people who caught this story on > slashdot are among the ignorant masses. :-/ I wouldn't really call them the ignorant masses but rather the I-can-almost-but-not-quite-understand-this masses. Since they don't fully understand it they assume that it is something bad and post their unordered thoughts in hope that other might make something out of it. > > > 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. > > > Personally I think the LGPL is pretty damn good and fits wine > pretty well > but we simply need to clarify the gray areas about what is and is not > allowed (see above). That is the point we disagree on, at least partly. > > 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. > > > Hmm.. y'know that's a good idea. At least it something concrete to do instead on arguing back on forth about abtract fears. > We should collectively think of the different scenarios and > ask one very > important question: Do we /really/ want to prevent this scenario from > happening? Ah, I forgot that very important question. I intend to supply it but somehow it got lost. But perhaps the question: 1. Do you consider his or her behavior morally or ethically defendable? sums it up pretty well as well. I can't think about anything except egoistical concerns that could make anybody want to prevent something they thought morally and ethically defendable. > Personally I have warmed up a slight bit to the idea of > Lindows. At first > I was a bit like.. those dickheads took wine, added a few > things, and are > gonna sell it for $100/seat and we're not getting any of that > or even any > improvements back!? That bites. > > But now I realize that we need to put that emotion aside and > look at how > exactly lindows harms wine (which it does). > > The first thing is the issue of binary-only wine that can't > be changed and > has absolutely no source. That really bites for the user who is thus > locked into Lindows complete package and cannot even change > the parts of > wine that Lindows has nothing to do with. If Lindows prevents users from updating their version of Wine it is really their and their users problems not our problem. > If we were LGPL > and allowed > importing functions from non-LGPL components then Lindows > could still add > value by implementing APIs in their own DLL or DLLs and > loading them from > wine. In fact, they don't need to be DLLs. They could just > put all their > stuff in their own closed source file, compile it, and > distribute the .o > so that end users (their customers) can later take that .o > file plus the > LGPLd modifications to wine that make it use the functions in > that .o, and > link it into a newer version of wine. I don't see why we should adapt our license to cater for people that make bad choices and suffer because of it. Especially when such a license might scare other people that might help us away. > Now, the second issue, and the one Alexandre is (or maybe > just was) most > concerned about, was companies implementing functionality > that the real > wine does not have will sometimes reduce the incentive for a > developer to > work on it. That is to say that a good portion of developers > that would > otherwise be contributing to Wine making stuff work will stop > if they can > simply by Lindows for $100 and make that work. Perhaps, but you will have to take the good with the bad and licenses preventing this also prevents other things. Whether LGPL really does this or not is another question though. > Ironically > moving to LGPL > would actually make it easier for a wine developer to use > some lindows > functionality since they could update the rest of Wine. > However, at least > for me part of the reason I like hacking on Wine is to hack > on wine to > have a version that is free software. That is, let's say > there had been a > working closed source ASPI layer then I could've used my CD-R > in Wine and > maybe I wouldn't have fixed a bunch of stuff with ASPI. But > doing that > was a lot of fun and I would have been the one missing out by > falling back > to a lindows implementation and never considering actually > fixing the real > wine implementation. Plus in the meantime at least my CD-R would've > worked so it would have been a less pressing issue and would > have avoided > numerous reboots for me in trying to create a free version. Regardless of any fun you might have had. Ask this question: Would you have consider it ethically or morally defendable if the Wine license had prevented you from using a proprietary ASPI library with Wine and distributing the result to your friends. > Anyway.. these are just two.. there are more I'm sure.. I > really need to > go to bed though. Different time zones. I returned from a late breakfast to find your mail. :-) > Before I do so, I would like to point you to the wxWindows website. > > According to their short license summary they use LGPL but > also allow you > to distribute a binary linking with wxWindows included. That > exception > would not be appropriate for wine (in fact, it's like the > main advantage > for us to use the LGPL I think). However we could do a similar style > thing and say: "We're LGPL but we specifically allow you to > create stub > functions in our library that call out to your proprietary component. See my suggestion about the "MGPL" instead. > Hopefully we can get this resolved this time... It's looking > promising > given the few and far between somewhat clear posts and > disregarding the > ill-informed wanna-be-on-slashdot shit. We will see. I'm neither optimistic nor pessimistic for the moment.

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Re: Dr. Seuss, licensing, and WINE
by Brett Glass Feb. 9, 2002

Feb. 9, 2002

Plato (tom(a)redant.freeserve.co.uk) writes: >> Give me a break dude. Yes, the FSF wants all software to be free and >> wants to rid the world of commercial software altogether. >[...] > >I think it is worth pointing out the the Free Software Foundation does *not* >want to rid the world of commercial software. > >Stallman has, however, stated that he would like to rid the world of >*proprietary* software. Richard Stallman most certainly does want to rid the world of all commercial software. He says so in many of his essays. One of Stallman's propaganda techniques, alas, has been to refer to commercial software as "proprietary" software. He does this because the word "proprietary" has negative connotations. He hopes to co-opt those connotations so as to convince others to join him in his drive to destroy all commercial software. To set the record straight: Software is "proprietary" if it does not interoperate with other software, does not conform to industry standards, and/or uses unique file formats or protocols so as to lock users in or deter competition. Software is "commercial" (that is, the object of commerce) if it is licensed for money. GPLed software cannot be commercial because it cannot be licensed for money (the GPL prohibits this). You can sell a disc with GPLed software on it, but only the plastic disc is a commercial product -- not the code it contains. --Brett Glass

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Re: Wine license change (fwd)
by winedev＠admdev.com Feb. 9, 2002

Feb. 9, 2002

(Reposted, as I just realised my Pine roles wern't sending this from the right address :) Regards, | It's always bad news in computing.. and beware | of anything claming to be good news - because | its probably a virus. - Salmon Days Ender | (James Brown) | [Nehahra, EasyCuts, PureLS, www.QuakeSrc.org] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 08:44:52 +0800 (WST) From: "J.Brown (Ender/Amigo)" <ender(a)enderboi.com> To: Brett Glass <brett(a)lariat.org> Cc: wine-devel(a)winehq.com Subject: Re: Wine license change > >John Carmack made an intresting point, he releases ID softwares older > >releases under the GPL. Why? Because after originally releasing an engine > >after a BSD-esque license, a project done some very major work to the > >engine... and then lost it in a harddrive crash. So his -main- reason for > >using the GPL is to prevent work done in the community from being lost. > > He really should take the time to back up his drives. ;-) But, assuming > that he wishes to use this rather unusual backup mechanism, why would the > GPL be any better at this than a BSD-style license? Sorry, let me clarify that point... the major work that was lost was done by a COMMUNITY project, not one of ID's in-house ones. His point is that as the xGPL forces the release of source code with any binaries, so any valuable work like this won't be lost to the community. This has intresting implications for wine too. It's nice to say that Codeweavers/Transgaming/Lindows/etc might feed slice of code 'x' back to Wine at 'i' time in the future. Of course, if said company goes bust (sorry guys, but this IS the post .com era ;), there is a chance that code could be lost for good. - Ender

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RE: Wine, enthusiasts, businesses and the agony of the license
by Patrik Stridvall Feb. 9, 2002

Feb. 9, 2002

> On Sat, 9 Feb 2002, Patrik Stridvall wrote: > > > I think you will be able convince both the lazy person above > > as well as the bean counter that this will be the best > > long time choice. > > > > > If Wine is LGPL they must release the patch if they want > to reap the > > > benefits of using Wine, and they can release it without > fear of giving > > > away money to someone else. It can even be argued that the > > > LGPL makes Wine > > > an even safer bet, since it guarantees that other companies > > > in this group > > > will chip in, this way Wine will be in even better shape when > > > the first > > > application was a smash hit and they decide to port their > next app! :) > > > > Correct, but this is likely to be true anyway for reasons > given above. > > > > This is what I imagine the LGPL proponents are dreaming > about at night. > > Unfortunately it is a dangerous dream since it total ignores the > > drawbacks with a LGPL:ed Wine. > > > > The drawback would be that it locks out the companies from > group 1 (yes, > you have pointed out technical problems that might render the LGPL > worthless, but I'll leave the bugfixing for now, lets just assume it > actually works). > > My question is, to you and everyone else, how valuable are > this kind of > companies to the Wine community? A relevant question, unfortunately the problem is much more complex that that. Assuming that LGPL really prevents wrapper libraries have very far reaching consequences. I have tried to give example of specific cases like the Joe Hacker hobbist with his proprietary hobby related library and his proprietary Windows application and his wish not to dual boot. I asked whether doing this (or for that matter preventing) this was among other things ethically or morally defendable. You can't just focus on the companies that wish to profit on Wine in some way. But yes, short answer: I believe such companies like Transgaming is valuable for the simply reason that our resources are limited, this allows us to concentrate on improving other parts of Wine. If in the future decide that hey now that we have more developer resources, now let do a really free DirectX, we can do that. Always remember that: He who defends everything, defends nothing. In short a strategic retreat means that we get resources to defend what we have and later take it back as we grow stronger. > Yes, they may make progress fast, maby they are even required > to take Wine > from the allmost but not quite stage to actually reach that > elusive goal > of 99.9% Windows compatibility. > > But at the same time this progress may never make it back to > the community. > And as pointed out by Alexandre, in the worst case scenario > they may halt > or slow down progress in the free version, because there is > no incentive > to implement some missing peice when it already exists and > can be bought > cheaply from company X. Well and as I pointed out. Most people have a Windows license and many Micrsoft DLL work fine under Wine. Yes, I know he thought that to was bad too. But then you can't both have the cake and eat it. The same thing with other proprietary extensions, except perhaps better from Alexandres point of view, since much more people have Windows licenses than a random proprietary library. > The limited experience shows that things has worked out OK. It will be > interesting to see what Lindows ends up doing, I wish they > would skip the > maketdroid speak for a while and join this discussion. Agreed. > > > have the least to gain from contributing anything back. The > > > companies in > > > group 2 have the least incentive to work on Wine, just > fix the bare > > > minimum to get their application to work, but instead > they can allow > > > themselves the luxury to contribute and score some goodwill. > > > > Since companies in group 2 are likely to contribiute back anyway > > for reasons given above I see no reason to hurt group 1 companies. > > > > Yes, each and every one has to go back to his own motivation > for working > on Wine, does it matter if the group 1 companies get a free lunch? Well, all users of Wine already get a free lunch, and they might already profit from being able to run say Microsoft Office under Linux so if you are worried about people getting a free lunch you already have a serious problem.

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Re: Wine license change
by Brett Glass Feb. 9, 2002

Feb. 9, 2002

Roland (roland(a)netquant.com.br) writes: >To write it again we have two interests: > >1. People who want to make money selling WINE or derivates == anti xGPL >2. People who contribute for free or have another business model than the >above == pro xGPL There are a few more categories who would not want the (L)GPL: 3. Professional programmers who would like to fix bugs (if the code is (L)GPLed, they can't without becoming "tainted" by having read the code); 4. Anyone who objects to viral licenses or the FSF's misleading propaganda; 5. Users who want to be able to buy a commercial product with professional support, especially good integration, and possibly enhanced features; 6. Anyone who does not want to see WINE fork into truly free and FSF-licensed versions; and 7. Anyone who cares, on principle, about software freedom and choice. --Brett Glass

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RE: Wine, enthusiasts, businesses and the agony of the license
by Patrik Stridvall Feb. 9, 2002

Feb. 9, 2002

> What's lacking in this discussion is some sensible analysis of what a > license need to contain to encourage future contributions to > Wine and to > protect the interests of the contributors. Fearmongering about Wine's > future and paranoid delusions about the GPL license doesn't > bring anything > to the table... Agreed. > Over to category two. Corel's source of income isn't from > improving Wine, > it's from selling their own work, Wine just makes their work > more valuable. > Here it doesn't really matter if Wine is BSD or LGPL > (remember that the > INTENT of the LGPL isn't to infect all and everything). > > A company that chooses this route may have to improve Wine > here and there > to fill in the missing pieces to make their port work, and by > releasing > this patch they will contribute to Wine as a whole. > > Unfortunatley they might not, don't underestimate the power > of laziness. > One other plausible reason is that some bean counter is afraid that > someone else will pick up their work for free and make money out of it > (i.e. Lindows) how'd you explain that to your shareholders? 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. 3. Have some sort of wrapper library that implement all the improvments that they don't what to release, that in turns calls the Wine real corresponding Wine function. Now they can, if the designed it correctly, use new versions of Wine without any problem. 4. Release the code to the Wine project and be able to run with the latest version of Wine without any problem. (1) and (2) are not very attractive. Resyncing the trees are quite time consuming. Especially (2) will not be fun at all. Both requires continously working with Wine. In any case I guess most companies want the Wine adaption to be a ONE TIME cost not a continous one. Likely they want to hire specialists from companies like CodeWeavers. This leaves (3) and (4). If you design (3) wrongly the application will break with newer version of Wine so it is not really a that good choice either. In addition it will require extra work just to be able to hide the improvments. This leaves (4) ie they treat Wine is LGPL even if it isn't. I think you will be able convince both the lazy person above as well as the bean counter that this will be the best long time choice. > If Wine is LGPL they must release the patch if they want to reap the > benefits of using Wine, and they can release it without fear of giving > away money to someone else. It can even be argued that the > LGPL makes Wine > an even safer bet, since it guarantees that other companies > in this group > will chip in, this way Wine will be in even better shape when > the first > application was a smash hit and they decide to port their next app! :) Correct, but this is likely to be true anyway for reasons given above. This is what I imagine the LGPL proponents are dreaming about at night. Unfortunately it is a dangerous dream since it total ignores the drawbacks with a LGPL:ed Wine. > Companies that decide to develop a new app and use Wine as the cross- > platform framework also belongs to this group. Partly, but new applications can avoid using unimplemented functions so they are less likely to contribute anything back. > Back to Wine again, the selfish motive here is to make Wine > better faster. > So if we get the choose between companies in group 1 or 2, who will > contribute the most? Obviously the ones in group 1 will do > the most work, > since their living relies on a perfectly working Wine, > unfortunatley they > have the least to gain from contributing anything back. The > companies in > group 2 have the least incentive to work on Wine, just fix the bare > minimum to get their application to work, but instead they can allow > themselves the luxury to contribute and score some goodwill. Since companies in group 2 are likely to contribiute back anyway for reasons given above I see no reason to hurt group 1 companies. > So what's the conclusion? Either you pick your favourite way of making > business and lobby for a compatible license, or you start > thinking out of > the box and find the perfect balance that let's everyone keep > the cake and > eat it... Well, that would be good. However I'm pretty convinced that a very good solution would be not moving to LGPL. While perhaps not the ultimate solution, I have a gut feeling that no better soltion exists in the real world. > I'll be back tomorrow with more opinions, and my stab at > thinking out of > the box. Your welcome.

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Re: Dr. Seuss, licensing, and WINE
by David Elliott Feb. 9, 2002

Feb. 9, 2002

On 2002.02.09 05:32 Plato wrote: > On Sat, Feb 09, 2002 at 03:50:09AM -0500, David Elliott wrote: > > On 2002.02.08 15:03 Brett Glass wrote: > > [...] > > >taxes: It will act in its own interest, not yours. The FSF's > > >sole goal is to destroy commercial software developers, and > [...] > > Give me a break dude. Yes, the FSF wants all software to be free and > > wants to rid the world of commercial software altogether. > [...] > > I think it is worth pointing out the the Free Software Foundation does > *not* > want to rid the world of commercial software. > > Stallman has, however, stated that he would like to rid the world of > *proprietary* software. > Whoops, sorry, you are correct about that. However to the person I was replying to commercial==proprietary. Red Hat Linux is a commercial product, but not proprietary (to give an example). Though I think Red Hat does have a few proprietary products they work on. > There is an incredibly important difference. Please do not use the terms > interchangably. See > > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Commercial > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/software-libre-commercial-viability.html > Been there long ago.. just kinda forgot. -Dave

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RE: Wine, enthusiasts, businesses and the agony of the license
by vinn Feb. 9, 2002

Feb. 9, 2002

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 Feb. 9, 2002

Feb. 9, 2002

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 Feb. 9, 2002

Feb. 9, 2002

> 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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