Brett Glass wrote:
At 01:13 PM 2/13/2002, Christopher Dewey wrote:
With the exception of the copyright holder(s), (L)GPL provides everyone with the same rights. The license does not discriminate between developers and "potential developers".
Not so. The (L)GPL allows everyone to use the code in the way that benefits him or her the most, EXCEPT for developers -- who not only may not use the code but may be exposed to claims of copyright infringement if they even read it in order to learn from it. The (L)GPL is also intended to destroy their markets, businesses, and livelihoods. The (L)GPL is thus extremely discriminatory against programmers.
Brett, you continue to ignore that the (L)GPL implicitly treats *everyone* as programmers, regardless of their occupation, motives, intent, or what they actually end up doing with the software. By painting the license as "discriminatory", and continuing your attacks on the FSF and RMS's politics on this list, you confuse the issue, and do this list and the Wine community a disservice.
The issue at hand is that neither the LGPL, nor the current Wine license meet every Wine developer's needs and goals, with the consequense that the development effort spent on Wine may be slowed or fragmented. It's a real problem, and a compromise is required.
I'm thankful that the principal Wine developers, including the representatives of commercial interests, all seem very level-headed and pragmatic with regard to the problem. Hopefully they will find a compromise that allows them to pursue their common goals, to the benefit of the greater Wine community.