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.