Jeremy White wrote:
... However, with some recent events I cannot disclose, it is clear to me that the opportunity for Wine to be used in a proprietary product is too tempting and has caused some harm to the Wine project. Based on experience, I feel strongly that the potential for harm is great enough that CodeWeavers needs to take two actions. First, we would like to release all new code we develop under an LGPL style license. Second, I would like to open another call for a license change and thereby strongly add my voice to Alexandre's.
Thus, I would like to call for a change in the Wine license. I think we all agreed that the LGPL formed the basis for a good 'alternate' license strategy. Eben Moglen, the counsel for the FSF, has kindly offered to help review licensing strategies for Wine. The goal is to attempt to secure some form of Copyleft protection for Wine while still permitting proprietary software to link and bind with Wine. ... 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.
It's about time. Putting Wine under the xGPL is the best way I can think of to ensure its future. The xGPL makes it possible for competitors to cooperate for their common good - which is pretty amazing. As Bob Young said at the formation of the Gnome Foundation (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,s2080853,00.html): "There's been a fundamental problem of getting industry consortium to work together... But we don't have a single corporate lawyer in the room. We haven't signed a single licence among any of us... With the GPL, we have eliminated the need for trust." See also http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/random-bits/2001-June/000589.html
- Dan