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84469 discussions

Re: ldconfig : ..... .so is not a symbolic link
by lawson_whitney＠juno.com 17 Feb '02

17 Feb '02

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Sylvain Petreolle wrote: > > ldconfig -v produces : > /usr/local/lib: libopengl32.so -> libopengl32.so libglu32.so -> libglu32.so libmsvcrt20.so -> libmsvcrt20.so libsane.so.1 -> libsane.so.1.0.7 ldconfig: /usr/local/lib/libwine_unicode.so is not a symbolic link libwine_unicode.so -> libwine_unicode.so.1.0 ldconfig: /usr/local/lib/libwine_tsx11.so is not a symbolic link libwine_tsx11.so -> libwine_tsx11.so.1.0 .... Not only that, but make uninstall make install is broken. I thought that would fix it, but I had to install the wine binary by hand, and the result is exactly the same. Where there were symbolic links before are now copies. Besides wasting file space, though, I don't see it does any harm. You get this mail by the latest Wine, ldconfig warnings and all. Lawson First shoot the arrow. Then draw the bulls-eye. - J. A. Soucy

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RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
by Roger Fujii 17 Feb '02

17 Feb '02

> > if you have to give out an unlimited, royalty free license to your > > work, I think it's not unfair to say that you have given up your > > copyright protection. As the copyright holder, it's true that you > > can relicense it to suit other licenses, but it's not clear to me > > that you can clearly make a copyright infringment case if there is > > an LGPLed copy in the public. > Well if somebody uses my work in a way either not permitted by LGPL > or explicitly permited by me through some other license I can't see > why I can't sue. But the point I'm trying to make is that I can be in violation of your RELICENSE. I can make a claim that YOUR work is covered by the *GPL, so that your RElicense to me doesn't apply. If this holds, then my original statement that you gave up your copyright protection holds. -r

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RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> > The *GPL extends the circumstances where I can take somebodies work. > > but isn't this notion rather frightening? Frightning? Have you been effected with Brett fear mongering? :-) I don't consider it frightning. Copyleft is a trade where someone was allowed distribute my work and did and as companation I can take his related work. Of course this is not always good as I have been arguing in countless mail, but that is another thing. Sometimes this is good idea sometimes it is not. > > > nor does it force you to give up your copyright (effectively). > > > > Neither does the LGPL you can still license the code to others > > under any license. You just have to give it back under the > > LGPL as well. > > if you have to give out an unlimited, royalty free license to your > work, I think it's not unfair to say that you have given up your > copyright protection. As the copyright holder, it's true that you > can relicense it to suit other licenses, but it's not clear to me > that you can clearly make a copyright infringment case if there is > an LGPLed copy in the public. Well if somebody uses my work in a way either not permitted by LGPL or explicitly permited by me through some other license I can't see why I can't sue. At least not unless you claim that Open Source == Public Domain, but that is something else entirely.

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RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
by Roger Fujii 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> > while this is one *small* aspect of copyleft, the *GPL extends > > well beyond that. "fair use" does not allow you to redistribute > > work, > > Yes, it does, that it what fair use is: > The right to distribute somebody elses work or > part of work without a license under some > circumstances. you're right. I was just thinking in terms of backups and work as a whole. Good reading: http://www-sul.stanford.edu/cpyright.html > The *GPL extends the circumstances where I can take somebodies work. but isn't this notion rather frightening? > > nor does it force you to give up your copyright (effectively). > > Neither does the LGPL you can still license the code to others > under any license. You just have to give it back under the > LGPL as well. if you have to give out an unlimited, royalty free license to your work, I think it's not unfair to say that you have given up your copyright protection. As the copyright holder, it's true that you can relicense it to suit other licenses, but it's not clear to me that you can clearly make a copyright infringment case if there is an LGPLed copy in the public. -r

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Re: Clarification on my call for license change
by Roger Fujii 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

Aric Stewart <aric(a)codeweavers.com> wrote: > The simple of it is.. you, Patrik, would not buy a Wine distribution > form us. Why would you? You are a developer, and a wine developer on top of that. What seems to be the most commercially successful mode on top of opensource is to have an opensource base and have a value-add component - but I have yet to see a successful mode that has no propriatary component. > It is these sorts of people and companies that we want to target. And > financially Patrik's money for his license or even the money form all > the wine developers would be nearly insignificant compared to a 100+ > seat site license. uh, how can you sell a N-seat site license with something that is covered by *GPL (since this would be a violation of the license)? If your model is to sell by seat, I would like you see the reasoning between the difference of a 10 seat license and a 100 seat license with the *GPL. > As a developer who has worked on far too many proprietary Wine trees and > seen all the fights the Jeremy has gone through. I want to be assured that > i can give my code back to the wine community. As I said before, if a copyleft is all that is needed, choose a copyleft that makes SENSE. LGPL may be convienient, but I have seen no rational argument in having the *GPL's brand of copyleft (other than it's widely used). I think the mozilla project would be a good place to look... -r

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RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> Patrik Stridvall wrote: > > > No. If anything, it seems to be using licencing rules > > > to negate copyrights. It really wants to make a copyright > > > into "a right to copy it". Even taking what you say, if you > > > extend what is "fair" use, you obviously must be making it > > > less fair somewhere else.... > > > > As I said, very simplified. > > > > What I meant is that the mechanism that forces release of > > the extension of the LGPL (read: copyleft) is similar to the > > case where fair use is extended so I take legally take > > the work instead. > > while this is one *small* aspect of copyleft, the *GPL extends > well beyond that. "fair use" does not allow you to redistribute > work, Yes, it does, that it what fair use is: The right to distribute somebody elses work or part of work without a license under some circumstances. The *GPL extends the circumstances where I can take somebodies work. > nor does it force you to give up your copyright (effectively). Neither does the LGPL you can still license the code to others under any license. You just have to give it back under the LGPL as well. > > The copyleft mechanism forces "push" of the source code > > which is better in the case of software. > > > I by this wanted to illustrate that copyleft is not something > > inherantly "evil" as Brett Glass are apparently crusading against. > > I'll let Brett speak for himself (not like I can stop him :) ), but > I didn't see an argument that 'copyleft' was bad. It was the *GPL is > bad. Just as rms think proprietary programs are evil, Brett > and others > think that the loss of copyright protections are just as bad or worse. Perhaps. But as you said, let Brett speak for himself. > I'm not quite as concerned as Brett, as I think the viral > nature of the > *GPL will eventually be thrown out in US court. Yes, I think that too.

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RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> 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. Perhaps. But I think you seem to focus on worst case scenarios, many of them are IMHO unlikely to happend, which impacts negatively on your credebillity. > 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. I don't think it is quite that easy. I don't think most of them have an "religious" belief in the LGPL. I think they simple see it as a way to both eat the cake and have it while trivialize the price they have to pay in the order to acceive this. Note, however, that sometimes, but only sometimes, this price is actually worth paying, see below. > >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. I do not believe that you try to induce fear, but by focusing on unlikely to happend scenarios you cause fear regarless. > 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. Wine will survive regardless. However I very much fear that it might impact negatively on the willingless of companies to invest in the Wine market and thus reducing the speed which Wine develops with. Note that when Wine fully works (close to 100% of all Windows applications run) it will not matter what license we have, there will be no money in anything except support anyway and the LGPL will not hurt that. It is the way there that worries me. Note that we can always choose LGPL later, but after we have choosen it we can't go 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. Please, now you are fear mongering again. I care not whether I support Stallman or not. I care ONLY about what is good for Wine. > WINE should rise above this agenda and not become an > agent of it. What agenda? The GPL/LGPL works in ways that are almost the dual to fair use. Very simplified: It uses copyright to extend fair use. Fair use have an obvious place in the world. However trying to extend fair use to legalize (or rather rationalize) for example Napster like sharing of music clearly takes things too far. GPL/LGPL have an obvious place in the world. However it has close to the same price as fair use, it discourages investment in new works using classical business models and new business models need to be found. This is obvously not so easy, neither in music business nor in the software business. Possible, yes. Easy, no. Don't try to stretch my analogy to far. The point is this and only this: The GPL/LGPL have a place in the world for almost the same reasons that fair use have a place in the world. However if trying to extend fair use too far is not good, neither is trying it extend GPL/LGPL too far. While fair use is nessesary an author can't live of it. The same with GPL/LGPL.

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RE: Clarification on my call for license change
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> Patrik Stridvall wrote: > > > The point is: > > - The 100+ seat company gains. (They get support). > > - Red Hat gains. (They get money). > > - I gain. (I get money). > > - But CodeWeavers, that did a lot of work on Wine, > > doesn't gain anything and they are becaused of the LGPL > > been forced to release all of their work. > > > > Sure they might gain back a few bug fixes if I had to > > do in order to fix a few small flaws, but then Red Hat > > probably would have let me release it anyway. > > A few bug fixes? If it is important enough that such a big > customer pays > Red Hat for developing something then I guess that it is not > only a few > bug fixes we are talking about here. Well, if they just want a support contract the applications they use probably works fine in usual case thanks to the works of others that I have download for free thanks to the LGPL and made a RPM for them. But OK there will probably more that a few bugfixes but somehow I think that most of the time will be spent telling ignorant users the obvious, that is what support usually is. The support money will also pay for me making new RPMs for them from time to time get even more stuff for free thanks to LGPL. Beside a simple support contract are not likely to allow for advanced fixes without extra money being paid. The point is that CodeWeavers will not get any money at all. > And that is to the advantage of > CodeWeaver then because they gain also fucntionallity they might have > needed to develop themself. Yea sure, but don't have too much hopes that it will be that much. Support means support not development. Beside Red Hat would probably have let me release the fixes back even if they didn't have too since the license was still BSD. If their applications works under Wine, there is no reason for me to implement any new functions.

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RE: Clarification on my call for license change
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> > of it is not possible. If just somebody in the world realizes > > the flaw he can contact the companies in question and > > point this out to them and for a fee do the work of recompiling > > their application for them. > > You are assuming here, that any given customer will sit and > wait until a > suitable patch is released. That may be true for many and > that's what I > wrote about my earlier job in my previous mail. But if this is an > important feature than he will pay for it because he needs to. If this > is released for others this is no problem because for others > apparently > it may not be that vital otherwise they would have paid for it in the > first place. If you can get the fully cost from the first customer, yes. But often you can't. So you develop it for say 50% of the cost and hope that the rest of your customers will pay the rest. Usually this will work out fine. However with the GPL this is impossible. You almost must have the full cost upfront which means that you have to spend more time negotiating to get the whole cost covered. Worse sometimes you miscalculate how must something costs, but that it not that bad if the code is proprietary. Now when you know the cost you know what to charge the rest of your customers. > Another implicit assumption here is that customers pay for a > given piece > of code. In my opinion they are often not doing that. Instead they pay > for a service. They pay for the service that they have > someone whom they > can contact and who will code if neccessary. That is absolutely correct. However using the GPL would force me to charge everybody that calls the full cost for each improvement. Often the cost will not outweigh the benefit for them so no deal unless I can reduce the price somehow. With the GPL this is impossible. > So even if they use an OS > code that doesn't imply that they never again will pay for any service > based on the assumption that any given functionality they > will need will > turn up sooner or later. Of course not, but some smaller customer might not have so much money so they often hope somebody else will have the same problem and pay for it. > Most larger customers (and I think that's the > one who are intersting for business models) are not willing > to bet their > business on the fancy of some developers. They want to have plans they > can follow so they in turn can tell their customers when and > how a given > problem will be solved. That's why xGPL also works for companies. The problem is not whether it works or not the problem is the drawbacks. As I have said before sometimes this is worth it, sometimes it is not. > I was once arguing with collegues because they maintained that if MS > gave their code for Word to OS then nobody would buy Word anymore and > they couldn't make any money from it. I stil say, and that is > the point > here as well, that this is not true. Private indivudals won't pay > anymore, but usually they are not the money anyway. Really large > companies, with their own development staff might also choose > to develop > and maintain themself, and there may be some loss. But the majority of > smaller companies would still pay for the service of maintainence and > for adding features they need and I bet that even bigger companies who > could afford their own development wouldn't choose to do that. Why > should they? It's more sensible to let somebody develop that who know > about it. The code is there as an insurance should the > developer ever go > down, but not for developing by everybody else. Yes, sometimes this will work out fine, but as I said it comes with a cost and the GPL limits want and how you can offer things to market quite severly. The problem with things like Word processors is that few users use or need new features so the market for enhancements will be quite limited.

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RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> Patrik Stridvall <ps(a)leissner.se> wrote: > > > > WINE should rise above this agenda and not become an > > > agent of it. > > What agenda? > > > > The GPL/LGPL works in ways that are almost the dual to fair use. > > Very simplified: It uses copyright to extend fair use. > > No. If anything, it seems to be using licencing rules > to negate copyrights. It really wants to make a copyright > into "a right to copy it". Even taking what you say, if you > extend what is "fair" use, you obviously must be making it > less fair somewhere else.... As I said, very simplified. What I meant is that the mechanism that forces release of the extension of the LGPL (read: copyleft) is similar to the case where fair use is extended so I take legally take the work instead. Of course fair use requires the use of "pull" which my be of less use if the work is compiled into a binary. The copyleft mechanism forces "push" of the source code which is better in the case of software. I observed that there are some theoretical similarites between fair use and copyleft. So seeing copyleft as some sort of contracted or licensed fair use makes sense. This suggest that a too broad fair use have similar problem that a too broad application of copyleft. And indeed both have the freeloader problem for example. I by this wanted to illustrate that copyleft is not something inherantly "evil" as Brett Glass are apparently crusading against. Like the case for fair use a little copyleft is good as long as you don't get to much.

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LGPL, and real World
by Hetz Ben-Hamo 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

Gentlemen, I do not wish to interrupt the nice email party going on here, but I wish to bring an example in real life which might let people re-think their decision.... I'll try to be a simple as I can. The following case is totally fiction. For the sake of this email, lets say I'm a lead developer in a company caled qwerty-wine, and one of my customers want me to develop a software for his palm top tun Visio XP on it, for the field engineers. For the sake of this example, lets say I'm checking out wine cvs today. Now - lets say that now is May, Codeweavers had decided to switch to LGPL and lets say that I am their competitor and I just had become aware of a DLL which is not implemented, but it is (according to a co- developer) implemented in Wine under the LGPL tree, so it means I'm 2 "cvs" commands from getting their implementation... Now - what if my product is totally a closed source one and my client doesn't want to reveal a single source code line? then I have 2 choices regarding this DLL: 1. I can Ignore the DLL in the Wine tree and re-implement it from where it was before the license has been changed and I keep the changes since it already implemented in Wine tree (and my customer doesn't want to reveal code). 2. I can "steal" this code from the new LGPL wine tree, and saving myself 90% of headache how to implement it, and invest 10% of the time to change the code cosmetically to look different, so if CodeWeaver's wine DLL looked like: 1+2+3+4=10 Then my code will look like: 5+5=10 So the code is different, but it does same thing, and I still keep my code closed... Who's loosing here? CodeWeavers. I used their code and no one got nothing out of this. Nada. Zilch. Zero. All their investment on that DLL implementation went down, they'll have hard time to re-cap this investment. Lets say that CodeWeavers could drag me to court and I'll be happy to show the code to the Judge or any 3rd party mediator - what he'll see? he'll see completly 2 different implementations which give same results. I win the case and I can collect damages from CodeWeavers. I repeat again - all the above is a FICTION. I'm not a developer (I'm unemployed at the moment) and the whole case - I made it up (although I heard some people were interested to see Wine on Embedded). But you wouldn't know if your competitor will use this trick with your code, will you? TransGaming probably won't do it, but others? So yes, CodeWeaver have their full right to move their code to LGPL or whatever. Is it a smart move for the Wine development move? yes. Is it a smart move business wide? IMHO - no, but CodeWeavers is a private company, and it's Jeremy full right to decide what to do with their code. I support CodeWeavers (bought their crossover even if I used it for 2 days), Transgaming (I subscribed, even if their code doesn't make my games work yet), and Lindows (I'll keep my Redhat and multi user approach, thank you!) and I plan to continue to do so - but will CodeWeaver exists due to this move? for a long term - I'm not sure, although I surely hope to be wrong here.. Just food for thought... Hetz Ben Hamo

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RE: Clarification on my call for license change
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> Patrik Stridvall wrote: > > > They turn to their respective distributor say Red Hat and > say that they > > are prepared to pay $XXX per year for a better supported Wine. > > Red Hat in turn hires me (or some other on this list) to do > this and I do: > > > > cvs update ; ./configure ; make install > > > > That is your problem. > > I fail to see why this should be a problem. Once the code is > written is > (basically) free to use by the one who wrote it (or ordered it, > depending on the agreements). Red Hat got his money in that > case because > it agreed to create that code. I was talking about the 100+ seat support contract CodeWeavers wanted. > You got your money because you > were hired > by Red Hat. If Red Hat chooses now to release the code it > still has the > money and you still have your money. The only problem would be if it > didn't release the code and some other customer would come along and > asks for the same thing to be developed. In that case it > might be worse > (but for Red Hat) because it can now get paid a second time, while it > won't get paid if the code is released. But that is a general > problem of > GPLed code and not specifically to Wine. I think that > companies working > with GPL code are well aware of that fact and their busines model must > accomodate that fact. The point is: - The 100+ seat company gains. (They get support). - Red Hat gains. (They get money). - I gain. (I get money). - But CodeWeavers, that did a lot of work on Wine, doesn't gain anything and they are becaused of the LGPL been forced to release all of their work. Sure they might gain back a few bug fixes if I had to do in order to fix a few small flaws, but then Red Hat probably would have let me release it anyway.

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RE: Clarification on my call for license change
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> 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 Actually I work for a company that works this way as well for some of our products. > and this works also for GPL code as well. No, it won't. There is nothing save ignorance that would make the other customers pay for it when can have it for free. Granted most customers are ignorant (as far as software development is concerned). But building a viable business model of it is not possible. If just somebody in the world realizes the flaw he can contact the companies in question and point this out to them and for a fee do the work of recompiling their application for them.

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RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> At 10:47 AM 2/16/2002, Patrik Stridvall wrote: > > >> If users are fully informed about what a Trojan horse REALLY does, > >> they may think twice about "running" it. > > > >Obviously everybody should be carefully before using a tool > >and study and understand for yourself what it really does > >an not rely on what other people say about it. > > > >But that doesn't mean that the tool inherits any > >"evil" purpose that the creator of it had in the > >process of creation. > > I disagree. A Trojan horse that, for example, trashes hard > disks or creates zombies for DoS attacks is fundamentally > bad. This is why it's called "malware." Compare the trojan to a weapon. It is the person that uses the weapon that does something illegal (or evil), regardless of whether the weaponed manufacturer had "evil intent. However regardless of whether the user or the manufacturer or both had "evil" intent the weapon is not "evil". A trojan for example might be used to make havoc in the enemys computer system. This is an act of war and is neither illegal nor "evil". > >I think the difference is that I don't consider Stallmans > >agenda unethical, only unrealistic. > > > >Forcing people to releasing small bug fixes is one thing > > It's a start down a slippery slope -- toward appropriating > any or all of their code at will. Well, if you are worried about the license of the C library that close to all Linux application links, you don't have to use it. I think it is entirely reasonable if a find a bug in the C library and fix it that I publish the fix as thanks for having privilage of using it for free. > >Yes, because the motor ways that can transport troups > >can also transport trade goods or people visiting > >other countries in friendship. The more trade the > >more interdepence and the less risk for war. > > Ah, but the government's terms won't let commercial > vehicles on the road. And why should they do that? And what is the analogy with either Nazi Germany or the GPL. > >> Yes, it can. You can forfeit your fair use rights via > >> a contract. And the FSF licenses are profferred contracts. > > > >That remains to be decided in court. > > Actually, no. Fair use rights can be signed away. > Non-disclosure agreements, for example, prevent people > from doing things that might otherwise be allowed > as fair use. Yes, but that have nothing to do with copyright or fair use for that matter. If you get hold of some work in trust you must of course keep that trust, but this have nothing to do with copyright at all. But claiming that some freely available work that I happend to download from site on the Internet that have a file with a license contains some obscure paragraph means that I have been entrusted that work is quite absurd and only in the US would a court even consider such absurd charges. Same if I would have bought the work in a shop. > >> >I don't think they will have much luck though, > >> >they have already tried to stretch the boundaries > >> >of copyright law with the GPL, > >> > >> This is another reason why the GPL is likely to be > >> ruled invalid. An attempt to use copyright law to > >> do anything beyond the purposes stated in the US > >> Constitution can be invalidated as "copyright abuse." > >> (This argument has been made in the Napster litigation > >> and Judge Patel has taken it quite seriously.) Certainly, > >> "turning copyright on its head" (these are Stallman's own > >> words for what a "copyleft" license does) would qualify > >> as copyright abuse. Hence, all "copyleft" licenses are > >> probably invalid and unenforceable. > > > >I think saying that the GPL is copyright abuse it taking > >it little far. > > Not at all. Read the case law. Type "copyright abuse" into > any search engine. I'm not particulary intrested. If you wish to invalidate the GPL fine, for me it is enough that Wine doesn't choose LGPL.

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RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
by Roger Fujii 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

Patrik Stridvall <ps(a)leissner.se> wrote: > > WINE should rise above this agenda and not become an > > agent of it. > What agenda? > > The GPL/LGPL works in ways that are almost the dual to fair use. > Very simplified: It uses copyright to extend fair use. No. If anything, it seems to be using licencing rules to negate copyrights. It really wants to make a copyright into "a right to copy it". Even taking what you say, if you extend what is "fair" use, you obviously must be making it less fair somewhere else.... -r

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RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> At 03:50 AM 2/16/2002, Patrik Stridvall wrote: > > >Note that when Wine fully works (close to 100% of all Windows > >applications run) it will not matter what license we have, > >there will be no money in anything except support anyway > >and the LGPL will not hurt that. > > WINE is not likely to work more than 90% ever, due to > the facts that Windows is a moving target True, but useful application have little reason to use new Windows API unless it gives them something substantial so I don't imagine this will be a large problem once we are close to completion. As the Windows application market slow moves to Linux with the help of Wine, the Windows application writers are likely to avoid using new Windows API because of portabillity reasons. > and that > Microsoft is likely to patent defensively. That is an orthogonal problem to licenses. Of course with the LGPL various companies can't even make a deal with Microsoft, but then Microsoft are not likely to make any deals anyway. > >It is the way there that worries me. Note that > >we can always choose LGPL later, but after we > >have choosen it we can't go back. > > This is a concern. Indeed. > >> 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. > > > >Please, now you are fear mongering again. > > No, I am stating historical fact. A tool is a tool. As every tool it can be use for good or evil. The purpose of the creator is irrelevant in the real world. Only in fairy tales like the Lord of the Rings can tools be inherently evil. Like the One Ring that answers to his master Sauron alone and corrupts everybody else to evil. Therefore I have a half serious question to you: Do you believe that the GPL is like the One Ring that answers to his master Stallman alone, and corrupt everybody else to evil? "One License to rule them all, One License to find them. One License to bring them all and in darkness bind them" You don't seriously believe this do you? > >I care not whether I support Stallman or not. > >I care ONLY about what is good for Wine. > > Ethics, consumer choice, and the future of programming > as a profession all matter as well. It is not ethical > to focus only on the interests of one project. Ah, perhaps I shouldn't have formulated myself better. What I meant was that just because somebody is "evil" supporting _some_ of the things they support doesn't make you "evil" or unethical. Hitler supported building new autobahns (motor ways). I support build new autobahns (motor ways). However this doesn't make me "evil". > >The GPL/LGPL works in ways that are almost the dual to fair use. > >Very simplified: It uses copyright to extend fair use. > > The opposite is true. It attempts to deny fair use by programmers. No license can deny fair use. I think even in people in the LGPL camp agrees with me in this. > And GPL V3 will attempt to deny fair use by ASPs. I'm not sure that "fair use" is the correct term. First of all I personally make a difference between non-infringing use and fair use. At lot of people call both things fair use. What they are trying to do is to make some use that is tradionally considered non-infringing use to be infriging use. I don't think they will have much luck though, they have already tried to stretch the boundaries of copyright law with the GPL, so I predict that they will fail, it is not no much a question on how they formulate the license, it is more question on where the boundaries of copyright really is.

3 3

wine and debian - what's up?
by Dan Kegel 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

http://lwn.net/daily/woody-release.php3 says > From: Anthony Towns <aj(a)azure.humbug.org.au> > To: debian-devel-announce(a)lists.debian.org > Subject: [2002-02-16] Release Status Update > Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 12:23:18 +1000 > > Hi guys, > > The good news, and the bad news. > > The good news is that base is back in good shape. glibc, base-passwd and > rsync have all had their RC bugs fixed which is very pleasing. ... > > The bad news is that this means we're probably releasing soon, and that of > the hundreds of less important packages with RC bugs (eg, bugzilla, craft, > crossfire-{client,server}, epic4, fvwm95, gmc, gnome-admin, intuitively, > kdepim, moon-lander, tkdesk, wine, and xosview) will be getting randomly > ripped out of testing (in the case where bugs apply to the version in > testing, anyway). What this means, is that if packages you're interested > in have accumulated RC bugs (ie serious, grave or critical) you've almost > run out of time to get them fixed if you want them released. What bugs are they talking about with wine? I only saw one marked as grave: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=133540&repeatmerged=yes but this one looks worth responding to, too: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=98661&repeatmerged=yes It might be good for wine developers who like debian to have a look at the debian bug tracking system. The main problem appears to be being addressed, but a little overkill never hurt. - Dan

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RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> >A tool is a tool. As every tool it can be use for good or evil. > >The purpose of the creator is irrelevant in the real world. > > Not so. When one is reverse-engineering a virus or Trojan horse, > for example, it helps a great deal to know what the creator > intended. > > And the GPL is, in many ways, a Trojan horse. (It's viral, too, > but that's another issue.) > > Programmers see the rhetoric at the top claiming that the license > will promote "freedom," and place it upon their code -- whereupon > its terms and conditions promote Stallman's agenda instead. > > If users are fully informed about what a Trojan horse REALLY does, > they may think twice about "running" it. Obviously everybody should be carefully before using a tool and study and understand for yourself what it really does an not rely on what other people say about it. But that doesn't mean that the tool inherits any "evil" purpose that the creator of it had in the process of creation. Sure there are trojan horses in the world intend or not intended and you should be careful what you use, that goes without saying. > >Therefore I have a half serious question to you: > >Do you believe that the GPL is like the One Ring that > >answers to his master Stallman alone, and corrupt > >everybody else to evil? > > You're being overly dramatic (and a bit silly) here. It was meant to be. I was just testing you. If you had answered yes, I would have known that further discussion was meaningless. > >> >I care not whether I support Stallman or not. > >> >I care ONLY about what is good for Wine. > >> > >> Ethics, consumer choice, and the future of programming > >> as a profession all matter as well. It is not ethical > >> to focus only on the interests of one project. > > > >Ah, perhaps I shouldn't have formulated myself better. > > > >What I meant was that just because somebody is "evil" > >supporting _some_ of the things they support doesn't > >make you "evil" or unethical. > > Alas, by using Stallman's licenses -- which are designed > to further his agenda to some extent no matter WHERE > they are used -- one is promoting something unethical. > One may not be doing so intentionally (just as one is > not being unethical if one votes for a corrupt politician > whom one does not know to be corrupt). But if you know > that you're supporting unethical activities and continue > to do so, then you are yourself not acting ethically. I think the difference is that I don't consider Stallmans agenda unethical, only unrealistic. Forcing people to releasing small bug fixes is one thing but forcing people to contribute considerably more will soon find that the willingless to contribute will decrease unless some external factor exists. > >Hitler supported building new autobahns (motor ways). > >I support build new autobahns (motor ways). > > > >However this doesn't make me "evil". > > I could invoke Godwin's Law here, but I won't. ;-) > > In the analogy above, suppose you find out that the > autobahns in question won't actually go anywhere that > citizens (including you!) want to go, but are designed > to support military invasions of other countries in > which many innocent people will be needlessly hurt > or killed. Do you still support them? Yes, because the motor ways that can transport troups can also transport trade goods or people visiting other countries in friendship. The more trade the more interdepence and the less risk for war. You can't have the good without the bad. > >No license can deny fair use. > > Yes, it can. You can forfeit your fair use rights via > a contract. And the FSF licenses are profferred contracts. That remains to be decided in court. Anyway such considerations are close to meaningless a license can only binding to anybody buying or downloading a work. IIRC a judge suggested that if somebody found a piece of work lying on the street he could do whatever he pleased with it. I can for example have my friend do it and access the work over the network on his computer or however. As far as fair use is concerned it will not consider how you got hold of whatever you claim fair use on. > >I don't think they will have much luck though, > >they have already tried to stretch the boundaries > >of copyright law with the GPL, > > This is another reason why the GPL is likely to be > ruled invalid. An attempt to use copyright law to > do anything beyond the purposes stated in the US > Constitution can be invalidated as "copyright abuse." > (This argument has been made in the Napster litigation > and Judge Patel has taken it quite seriously.) Certainly, > "turning copyright on its head" (these are Stallman's own > words for what a "copyleft" license does) would qualify > as copyright abuse. Hence, all "copyleft" licenses are > probably invalid and unenforceable. I think saying that the GPL is copyright abuse it taking it little far. As far as the viral aspects of it maybe, but not as a whole.

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RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> My only issue is that both you and Patrik have made your > views more than > known, and it's obvious you hate the GPL and GPL-style licenses with a > vengance.. for whatever reason (which, as someone who has worked on > commercial projects involving the GPL, are not - in my experiance and > opinion - based in any substanciated fact whatsoever).. Please do not find me guilty by association. I'm sorry to say it but I don't think Brett Glass have helped my case at all, rather the opposite, because it seems obvious that many people seem to have a hard time seperating the various anti-LGPL view. I personally do not hate the GPL nor GPL-style licenses, I think they have a place in the world, but that place is not nessarily in the Wine project. I have tried to explain why throught countless mails so I will not do it again, just say that I'm not in the I-hate-the-GPL-club rather in the I-don't-think-your-understand-the-price-you-have-to-pay-club or the I-don't-wish-to-pay-the-price-club if you prefer. > 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. However _I_ do not agree.

3 3

RE: Clarification on my call for license change
by Patrik Stridvall 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

> 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. Is typelib code really in the same DLL as DCOM code? Note, I haven't checked, just asking. > 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. What I mean is that you, as every other company, must formulate a business stratergy and from this decide what code is strategic and what code is not. If you decide for example to be a pure consulting company, releasing all code might make sense since you get paid anyway and a better Wine means larger potential market and thus potentially more customers for you. If like Transgaming you wish to improve DirectX, it might makes sense to release non-DirectX code since they don't really have a business model that makes it possible to recoup such costs. This I think was made painfully obvious for Gavriel by Marcus reimplementation of what they did. > But which of the > following two > scenarios leads to the more healthy Wine and Wine marketplace? It depends on what the market want and are prepared to pay for. Since the market is unlikely to pay for random bug fixes, except in some circumstances like support contracts, random bug fixes have limited value. However releasing them for free, increases the value of other products in the market, including your own. Not only because some application will work better, but because a more stable "ground" increases the trust in that even seemingly working application really works. > * 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). There is no reason to state the obvious. But note that since it lies in your intrest to increase the quality and public intrest in Wine it might not been a bad choice. > Where would the first scenario, which appears to be what BSD > proponents advocate, leave the Wine community? I have said that you, like any other company, must consider what is strategic and what non-strategic code for you. It seems to me that Jermemy thinks that by using the LGPL he can both eat the cake and have it and I have tried to explain that this is not the case. By using the LGPL you will force yourself in the future to release code for the benefit of Linux distributions like Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera and Mandrake that are likely to will sign support contract for Wine with 100+ seat companies by strength of already having one for non-Wine stuff. Face it you will not have a chance against them. Even Lindows will have a hard time I predict. Sure you can still live by contracting and selling your proprietary products like CrossOver, but then you can do that even with the current Wine license. > Which one do > Transgaming > and Lindows prefer? Why don't you concentrate on your own situation without worrying about others. > Do they really prefer not to benefit from > any of our > code in the future? There is no reason to ask questions with obvious answers. > 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. That may be, but from that doesn't follow that the LGPL is the answer. > 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. Agreed. > That's why I think it is important for us (Wine community + > CodeWeavers + Transgaming + Lindows) to find a better solution. Yes, but the LGPL is not the answer. In his initial question Jeremy was talking about CopyLeft, not nessesarily LGPL. Why not continue the discussion from that point?

1 0

Re: a small patch to wineshelllink
by Michael Cardenas 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

forgot this: Changelog - Added a check for file type to wineshelllink. If the file is an executable, add "Type=application" to the kde entry. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Cardenas" <michaelc(a)lindows.com> To: <wine-patches(a)winehq.com> Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 3:24 PM Subject: a small patch to wineshelllink > I put this patch together, but once I did the diff against the current > cvs, I see that somebody has already fixed it. Here's a patch that is a > little more correct. > > It checks when an application is creating a desktop link and adds the > "Type=application" line if the link points to an executable. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- > --- wineshelllink Mon Jan 14 10:32:12 2002 > +++ /home/michael/wineshelllink Thu Feb 14 11:42:29 2002 > @@ -70,9 +70,11 @@ > [KDE Desktop Entry] > Name=$xname > Exec=wine "$path" -- $args > -Type=Application > Comment=$descr > EOF > + > +(file "$path" | grep -q 'MS-DOS executable (EXE)') && echo 'Type=Application' > + > [ -z "$workdir" ] || echo "Path=\"$workdir\"" > [ -z "$xpmicon" ] || echo "Icon=$xpmicon" > } > @@ -187,3 +189,4 @@ > fi > > exit 0 > + >

1 0

out of memory?
by David Laight 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

After a few games of freecell, I get the following message output repeatedly on the terminal I ran wine from. err:local:LOCAL_GetBlock not enough space in GDI heap 01c7 for 136 bytes This is running Wine-20020122.tar.gz under NetBSD. I don't think any of the wine processes have hit any unix limits. Any thoughts ? David

2 1

Wineconf attendance
by Gavriel State 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

Since various people have been saying "I'll go if you go", I just want to let people know that Ove and I will both be going to the Wineconf. Maybe I'll bring my fencing equipment and we can settle the licensing debate properly with a duel. 8-) http://www.fencing.net/pages/clubs/ccg/images/sn_ath.jpg -Gav -- Gavriel State, CEO TransGaming Technologies Inc. http://www.transgaming.com gav(a)transgaming.com

4 3

Wine's path VS host path
by David D. Hagood 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have an embedded system that I am developing that uses Windows based compilers. Unfortunately, WinNT bluescreens too much for me to be able to work, so I have ported the project to using Gnu Make, with the compilers being executed via Wine. The problem is that the compilers search the path for their sub-components (just like GCC does - the driver calls the preprocessor, compiler, assembler, etc.). Now, the location of the project within the filesystem is not fixed - it depends upon where the developer checks it out. The project has the compilers stored along with the code, so the project is "self-contained". The project has a shell script that sets several environment variables describing the location of the project, and adds the needed directories to the Unix path. However, Wine (wisely) does not make that path available to the Windows program, so when the compiler driver looks for the preprocessor, it bombs. As a work-around, I've stated the the developers must install the tools into a fixed directory, and add that directory to the Windows path as defined in ~/.wine/config. However, it would be nice if the setup shell script could add the tools directory within the project automatically to the Wine path. Has any thought been given to honoring a WINEPATH (or similar) environment variable, which would be added to the Wine path at runtime? On a related note: would it be possible to have a means to tell the wineserver process to "hang around" for a few seconds after the last wine process using it has terminated? Again, in this make process you get lots of "start wine, start compiler, compile, exit. Start wine, start compiler, compile, exit" operations - if the wineserver stuck around for 2 seconds after the last wine process terminated, this would aviod starting and stopping the wineserver process.

5 9

Re: a small patch to wineshelllink
by Alexandre Julliard 16 Feb '02

16 Feb '02

"Michael Cardenas" <michaelc(a)lindows.com> writes: > - Added a check for file type to wineshelllink. If the file is an > executable, add "Type=application" to the kde entry. You can't do it that way, there is no guarantee that 'file' will return the same description on all machines. -- Alexandre Julliard julliard(a)winehq.com

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