On Sat, 15 Dec 2001, Gerard Patel wrote:
At 07:47 PM 13/12/2001 -0800, you wrote:
What do others think?
I feel rather dismayed by the whole discussion.
Gerard,
Maybe this is so because the way you approached the issue. See, you are concerned with the semantics of things, the 'why', and I'm afraid this is just the road to mandness. To see why, read your email: you talk about user's rights, whether the current set of laws is just, wether the current punishment for thieves is justifiable, etc. On top of it all, you seem to suggest that LGPLing Wine would transform us in some sort of evil company that runs around and puts people into jail! First, I hope you realise that our choice for the licence will not change the legal system or the world at large in no way, so discussing such issues in this thread will just open up an unrelated can of wroms that has plagued humanity for centuries. Second, even suggesting that a LGPL Wine will the an evil 'intelectual property' monster is ridiculous. Just a reminder, most open source projects are (L)GPL and _that_ community is the only significant force in today's society fighting against such things as software patents, DCMA, SSSCA, etc.
That being said, how shell we approach this issue. I claim we need to detach ourselves from the semantics, and stick to the syntactic manipulation to make any progress (for those familiar with logic and its history, that was the only way people made any progress there). In other words, let's leave the 'why' to anyone's imagination -- each and every persons has his or her reasons of doing things, and no amount of discussion will reach a consensus in that area.
If we agree up to this point, what is the 'syntax' I was referring to? Well, IMO this is a stronger Wine that keeps evolving and that has a life of its own. Wether this is good or not for users it's irrelevant. Some may say yes, others (e.g. Microsoft) may say no. I submit that we that this goal as axiomatic and we go from there.
Now, I can argue that this very axiom eliminates any sort of proprietary licence, but I will not do it since it's understood by everybody here. I will just look at the two possible options: BSD vs. LGPL. There are two points in my axiom: 1. we should try to make Wine stronger (e.g. evolve faster) 2. Wine should have a life of it's own
Let's look at the first part: make Wine evolve faster. LGPL pros: -- _far_ bigger code base for sharing/reuse -- _far_ bigger developer base -cons: -- we may lose developers that are opposed philosophically to the GPL ideals -- less commercial freedom when using the code base BSD (just negate the above)
And now for the second part: Wine should have a life of its own. This is, to my mind, the crucial part. The problem with a BSD licence is that it does not ensure that. The cool and amazing thing about the (L)GPL is that it puts in place the right feedback loop (or vicious circle if you will) that ensures a project a life of its own independent of who's developing and maintaining it: the bigger the project becomes, the more people will use it, (up to now BSD and GPL are the same), the more people will contribute to it, the bigger the project becomes!!! It's the equivalent for the 'rich get richer', but the currency is not money but usefulness/code. It is simple, yet brilliant.
It is to this very cycle that we owe the success that the Open Source enjoyes. Any successful system (any, not only software) that survives the test of time is based on intrinsic feedback loops, not a (temporal) political drive of the participants. All politically (only) driven systems are bound to fail (e.g communism). We NEED the feedback loop to keep Wine going in 10-20 years from now. I can not stress this enough.
-- Dimi.