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.