RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
At 02:19 AM 2/16/2002, Patrik Stridvall wrote:
So now you've made your point, constantly, how about we just take it for granted that for every email sent to the list saying 'the gpl is good because...' you and Patrik will reply with 'No! It's evil, RMS is satan, viral licensing, noone will use it, blah blah blah'....
I have never said that. I do admit that Brett Glass have said that.
No, I never have.
You haven't? OK, perhaps not word by word, but I fully understand if people interpret your position that way. I'm sorry if I sound a little angry but it seems that some of people have found me guilty by association with you and that irritates me quite a bit. What you are doing IMHO is pure fear mongering, it will not help the case against LGPL. I firmly believe that the GPL and the LGPL has a place in the world. However that place is not in Wine project. The LGPL is IMHO for libraries that are pure libraries and have all functions implemented. Wine fullfills neither the pure criteria nor the have all functions implemented criteria. In such cases this allows bugfixes to go back, but new functions can be put in the application or in a new library not nessarily in the library itself that have to be under the LGPL. Then companies can choose for themselves whether they want the LGPL protection for their new functions or not.
At 02:38 AM 2/16/2002, Patrik Stridvall wrote:
I'm sorry if I sound a little angry but it seems that some of people have found me guilty by association with you
Patrik, don't you see? We're both guilty of the same sin: saying that everything does not revolve around the Earth. While we have different views of how things DO work, there's exceedingly strong evidence for what we say. But because it's contrary to some people's "religious" beliefs they would rather excommunicate us, suppress what we have to say, or burn us at the stake than listen.
What you are doing IMHO is pure fear mongering,
No, it's not. I am making predictions based on what has happened to other businesses in the recent past, as well as sound economic principles. I'm not advocating or attempting to induce fear. But if the outcome does not look rosy, it's because WINE really would head down a very destructive path if it were (L)GPLed.
I firmly believe that the GPL and the LGPL has a place in the world.
Their place, and purpose, has been stated by Stallman. (Not in the licenses themselves, which are designed to be deceptive, but in Stallman's words in his more candid moments.) It is to turn publicly available software into a weapon in his lifelong, personal vendetta. Again, he has stated this explicitly himself, and it is also well documented by third parties such as Levy. WINE should rise above this agenda and not become an agent of it. --Brett
Hello. I read the discussion for some time and thought it is time for me to say something, mainly because I got very angry about Brett's Anti-GPL campaign. On Sat, Feb 16, 2002 at 03:03:05AM -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
At 02:38 AM 2/16/2002, Patrik Stridvall wrote:
I'm sorry if I sound a little angry but it seems that some of people have found me guilty by association with you
Patrik, don't you see? We're both guilty of the same sin: saying that everything does not revolve around the Earth. While we have different views of how things DO work, there's exceedingly strong evidence for what we say. But because it's contrary to some people's "religious" beliefs they would rather excommunicate us, suppress what we have to say, or burn us at the stake than listen.
The *GPL people do the same as you: they claim their oppinion.
What you are doing IMHO is pure fear mongering,
No, it's not. I am making predictions based on what has happened to other businesses in the recent past, as well as sound economic principles. I'm not advocating or attempting to induce fear. But if the outcome does not look rosy, it's because WINE really would head down a very destructive path if it were (L)GPLed.
Cool. Nostradamus is back ;)
I firmly believe that the GPL and the LGPL has a place in the world.
Their place, and purpose, has been stated by Stallman. (Not in the licenses themselves, which are designed to be deceptive, but in Stallman's words in his more candid moments.) It is to turn publicly available software into a weapon in his lifelong, personal vendetta. Again, he has stated this explicitly himself, and it is also well documented by third parties such as Levy.
No Mr. Ballmer, it's not like that ;) While Stallman is quite strong in his advocacy for the GPL, he is not an evil dictator, who is fighting for world domination. You are only contributing off-topic Anti-GPL-FUD to this discussion.
WINE should rise above this agenda and not become an agent of it.
--Brett
I have to agree with you on that point. I think the problem of this discussion is, that neither the current X11/BSD license nor the LGPL are the right thing for WINE. We need another approach: a license that protects _both_ companies, which are providing support (Codeweavers) AND companies, which are providing code (Transgaming/Lindows). ATM, Codeweavers provides code and gets nothing back and Lindows is getting much and is not giving anything. If we had LGPL, CodeWeavers would have the benifit, while Lindows would lose its marketshare, because ppl could just download the code. I don't have a solution at hand, but I don't think LGPL or BSD will do the job. Maybe, we have to create our own license ? But it is most obvious that the BSD vs. GPL does not lead us to anything. If these are the only options, we need a LGPL-fork and a BSD-version. Brett's Anti-GPL campaign. -- Boris Buegling <boris(a)icculus.org> There are three kinds of people: men, women, and unix.
At 08:10 AM 2/16/2002, Boris Buegling wrote: [Gratuitous insults deleted]
I have to agree with you on that point. I think the problem of this discussion is, that neither the current X11/BSD license nor the LGPL are the right thing for WINE. We need another approach: a license that protects _both_ companies, which are providing support (Codeweavers) AND companies, which are providing code (Transgaming/Lindows). ATM, Codeweavers provides code and gets nothing back
Whereas, under the (L)GPL, it would... provide code and get nothing back. The (L)GPL would not protect CodeWeavers from anything. In fact, it would (as I've demonstrated in earlier messages) drive away at least some customers. So: If Codeweavers' business model is flawed, it can't make it regardless of licensing (and in fact would be worse off after a license change). If, on the other hand, Codeweavers' business model is NOT flawed, the current license would be fine. It would in fact be favored by end users and developers like myself (who cannot fix bugs if there's a risk of ( L)GPL contamination) and by potential customers of Codeweavers. There's therefore nothing to be gained from a license change... and a lot to lose. --Brett
On Sun, Feb 17, 2002 at 05:05:35AM -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
At 08:10 AM 2/16/2002, Boris Buegling wrote:
[Gratuitous insults deleted]
if you could just do this in your mails ;)
I have to agree with you on that point. I think the problem of this discussion is, that neither the current X11/BSD license nor the LGPL are the right thing for WINE. We need another approach: a license that protects _both_ companies, which are providing support (Codeweavers) AND companies, which are providing code (Transgaming/Lindows). ATM, Codeweavers provides code and gets nothing back
Whereas, under the (L)GPL, it would... provide code and get nothing back.
The (L)GPL would not protect CodeWeavers from anything. In fact, it would (as I've demonstrated in earlier messages) drive away at least some customers.
So:
If Codeweavers' business model is flawed, it can't make it regardless of licensing (and in fact would be worse off after a license change).
If, on the other hand, Codeweavers' business model is NOT flawed, the current license would be fine. It would in fact be favored by end users and developers like myself (who cannot fix bugs if there's a risk of ( L)GPL contamination) and by potential customers of Codeweavers.
There's therefore nothing to be gained from a license change... and a lot to lose.
--Brett
The LGPL would protect Codeweavers from projects like Lindows (as it looks to me). Lindows gets all the code Codeweavers have done and adds something to it and sells this whole package. With LGPL, they had to give the code back or they can't do their project. Since they are not giving back their code, there is no loss in not doing their project for the WINE project as a whole. A coding company like Lindows gain everything, without giving anything back. That is the problem that Jeremy sees and that you ignore. If Codeweavers release their code under LGPL and the main WINE tree would be BSD, all would be fine: Companies could not use Codeweavers code in close-source projects, while non-profit development on the Codeweavers tree would be fine. This is my last mail about the topic, because I stated everything twice already. Regards, -- Boris Buegling <boris(a)icculus.org> You can't take damsel here now.
At 03:16 AM 2/18/2002, Boris Buegling wrote:
The LGPL would protect Codeweavers from projects like Lindows (as it looks to me).
You have not made any credible argument as to why Lindows would harm Codeweavers in any way. They could, in fact, be a good client of Codeweavers. But Codeweavers will blow its chance to have that happen if it insists upon trying to compromise Lindows' business. Codeweavers will also lose other clients. --Brett
At 11:16 AM 2/18/02 +0100, Boris Buegling wrote:
sells this whole package. With LGPL, they had to give the code back or they can't do their project. Since they are not giving back their code, there is no loss in not doing their project for the WINE project as a whole. A coding
There is no loss for WINE, ok, but there is no win also. So where is the advantage of the lGPL? Furthermore it is not so clear that they won't contribute code back in the future. Look at Apple for example, they use FreeBSD but contributed the core of their OS X to the community: http://developer.apple.com/darwin/ Transgaming announced that they will contribute code back. But even if they don't my arguments are still valid.
company like Lindows gain everything, without giving anything back. That is the
Not only Lindows gains. Every user of WINE gains. And you have to agree that most users probably are not developers, so they didn't contribute anything back. At least this will be the case once WINE is stable and running. And you seem to miss an important point. Lindows gains mostly by adding a lot of features to the free WINE(read Brett Glass economic analysis in one of his emails please). Whats so bad about that? If this was an easy job to do, CodeWeavers(or any other company) could do that. Why aren't they doing it themselves? Because it costs a lot. Lindows is investing like 5 Million at least to make their WINE run properly, and they didn't get a cent back for it until now. Why do you want to prevent them from doing that? I think it is very good that the WINE project gives opportunity to build businesses and employ people! It's an illusion to think that Lindows is making money out of the free WINE. They are making money by investing hard cash...
problem that Jeremy sees and that you ignore. If Codeweavers release their code under LGPL and the main WINE tree would be BSD, all would be fine: Companies could not use Codeweavers code in close-source projects, while non-profit
Again, why shouldn't companies be able to use WINE code in their closed source projects? The fact that Jeremy doesn't like the way things are going is probably because he fears that his own business is going to suffer under it. Best regards, Roland
participants (4)
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Boris Buegling -
Brett Glass -
Patrik Stridvall -
Roland