On 2001.12.18 06:13 Geoff Thorpe wrote: [BIG SNIP]
The rest of the suggestion I would like to make may seem somewhat surprising; dual license this BSD+adv-clause with the GPL. Not LGPL, but GPL. GPL is an enormous hunk of trouble I know, but under a dual license you're only bound by it if you choose to use it instead of the alternative.
Umm, didn't I suggest dual-license Original BSD (w/ Advertising Clause) and LGPL in one of the first mails of this thread????
Or maybe I was thinking that and never actually sent the mail out.
Now why you would want to dual license Original BSD/GPL is beyond me. GPL is just simply not at all suitable for Wine.
Honestly, the dual-license Original BSD/LGPL seems very ideal to me. TransGaming could continue business as usual. Any future users of Wine would be required to disclose the fact that they were using Wine (which IMHO is a good thing) and we would still remain (L)GPL compatible since we would also be licensed as LGPL.
This dual licensing also has the advantage that it would put Patrick's arguments to rest since I could not see any person or company willing to push the LGPL to the limits simply to remove an advertising clause. Although I am sure Patrick will be more than happy to come up with an ongoing argument against this.
The only disadvantage to this method is that it really doesn't give us much protection. The only thing it offers us is that people who want to avoid the LGPL will have to make it known that they did so.
If we do go this route, I would highly suggest specifying a very prominent advertising clause. That is to say something like anywhere the application displays information about itself it should include a phrase such as "developed with Wine technology, visit http://www.winehq.com/ for information". Examples of places would be splash screens, about boxes, etc. for GUI apps and maybe a line or two output for CLI apps that already display their name in their output.
E.g. a CLI tool known as Foo application might display: Foo Application v1.0 Copyright 2001 Bar Corporation Developed using Wine technology, visit http://www.winehq.com/
This would also hold true for something like Lindows. During startup I assume it would display something like "Starting Lindows" so it should also be required to say something like "Developed using Wine technology, etc..."
Companies or individuals who would prefer not to have the advertising clause can simply abide by the LGPL license.
-Dave