On 17 Dec 2001 11:54:46 -0800, Alexandre Julliard julliard@winehq.com wrote:
Patrik Stridvall ps@leissner.se writes:
So you mean that all the people that are current voluntering to work of Wine won't work on Wine if it is almost complete just because somebody else have done the parts they need to run their applications and that they will happily pay for the right to use it.
No, I'm not saying they won't work on it when it's almost complete. I'm saying that there may not be enough incentive to complete it if all the parts are available under more or less proprietary licenses. Maybe I'm wrong, but your reasoning that it's OK for people who want games to have to pay for it certainly doesn't reassure me.
In that case it would be disasterous to make Wine run all Microsoft implemented non-core Wine DLL:s because then everybody would just be happy to use the Microsoft DLL:s and nothing beyond non-core would ever be implemented.
It would not be a disaster, but it is certainly a potential problem too. It is a smaller problem first because making the dlls run is about as much work as reimplementing them, and because they are completely proprietary, not half-way open source. But yes, I do think a number of features could have improved faster if people didn't use native dlls to work around the problems.
I am just a watcher, though I have dreams of being an active developer someday.... when I don't need my day job.
During the recent discussions, it struck me that the legal opinions being offered are a red herring. Projects such as Wine depend much more on the sociology of the situation than the legal fine points.
To that end, Alexandre has a critical choke hold on Wine development. All proposed patches flow through him. [Logically that could be a small subset of people with CVS update rights.] He can make decisions based on technical, artistic, developmental reasoning.
So, if some other entity [OE] is doing something not in the best interest of the whole project, he can simply refuse to cooperate with them. That means not engage in technical discussions, not take patches, etc. As the OE source base drifts away from Wine, their cost do doing business will steadily increase compared to a cooperative stance. If the OE is named as a non-cooperator, most other developers will tend to ignore their problems, also increasing their cost of doing business. It doesn't have to be anything dramatic. Cooperation will decrease their cost of doing business in the long term. They can take short term advantage but long term the cost will be severe.
Best wishes,
john alvord