On Wed, Feb 06, 2002 at 07:08:39PM -0800, Daniel Walker wrote:
When Alexandre last brought up this issue, he was very disappointed. He felt that there was not enough support from the 'silent majority' of Wine developers for a license change. His overriding lament to me was 'No one cares'. He further felt that since a small number of major Wine contributors objected, that it was not appropriate to change the license.
I would like to ask for a more formal process. I would like each and every contributor to Wine to send Alexandre a private email with an 'Agree' or 'Disagree' opinion, so that he can more truly assess what the contributors to Wine really want. The specific question I wish to pose is as follows:
This is ridicules.. If you have something to say then post it to this group. Private emails to Alexandre aren't going to stimulate meaningful conversation.
I don't think anything in Jeremy's message suggested that conversation was a requirement. He's looking for feedback to get an idea of how members of the Wine community feel. But if you're open to being persuaded that the LGPL would be a Good Thing for the Wine community, I can try to oblige you.
Finally, in closing, I wanted to summarize our position. We plan to release our future work under an xGPL style license, and we would like the rest of the Wine community to join us. If the bulk of the community wants to stick with the current license, then we will probably end up making a separate CVS development tree. Anyone would be free to use our work from that tree, under the xGPL-style license terms the FSF's lawyers recommend.
So lets get this straight, if no one wants to change to the LGPL you'll fork the code? I don't have anything necessarily against the LGPL, but your email sounds all wrong.
One thing to bear in mind is that others already ARE forking the Wine code. Given the nature of their work, Codeweavers must maintain a separate CVS tree locally; although we're fortunate in that their fork is open to backporting to the official tree. Other companies are forking with no intention to contribute back (see Lindows.com); still others (Transgaming) have made reintegration of their work contingent on turning an profit.[1] Jeremy is at least being courteous enough to let us know where /his/ company is going with the Wine code, and is inviting the rest of the Wine community to come along with him.
Cheers, Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
[1] I'm not judging here, just using them for illustrative purposes; I was among those who signed off on the current Wine license, and I recognize that the Wine license allows such uses.