It's great to have your opinion on this list Michael.. -devel or not, these are important issues to the future of both this project and open source in general!
But a quick question on the current debate, if you will..
Would Lindows as a company have issue with WINE changing license to the LGPL. The main objections at the moment seems to be that an LGPL license would scare commercial companies willing to spend money on WINE would be scared off by the LGPL.
It's known that Transgaming takes this stance, that they don't particually want the LGPL because it breaks their buisness model. Codeweavers seems to want the LGPL at this time... what is Lindows opinion?
Although I can't afford to get a trial copy at the moment, from what I've heard you are already using a fair portion of code under GPL or GPL-esque licensing, and your main buisness model seems to be more along the lines of making money from selling a distribution with support (eg, Redhat style) than actually making money of your IP itself...
I'd like to hear something from companies who actually ARE spending money on Wine, than theoretical comments of what a license change would mean to companies that arn't :)
Regards, James 'Ender' Brown
On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, Michael Robertson wrote:
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 12:06:39 -0800 From: Michael Robertson michael@lindows.com To: wine-devel@winehq.com Subject: Lindows.com and open source
Claude,
From: Claus Fischer ("claus.fischer@clausfischer.com) If the current license allows Lindows to make proprietary modifications and not give anything back, it certainly allows Codeweavers/whoever to make proprietary modifications and give back under LGPL.
Those who don't want to even read LGPL code for reasons of 'contamination' just shouldn't read it. You can't read Lindows code either.
Why should Codeweavers be morally pressured to contribute under a steal-me license when steal-it companies don't contribute at all?
Just to set the record straight.
Lindows.com has had a partner company producing the majority of our WINE code. The vast majority of the code that came from that partnership is in the public tree already.
Lindows.com has contributed code to open source projects. We have hired open source companies (spending over 500K) to help us reach our goals with the majority of the code going back to open source. Lindows.com has given financial support to several open source initiatives (such as KDE). Lindows.com has made significant investments in linux companies. All told, we've spent about 2 million in the 5 months that we've been a company.
Linux (and all the other pieces) does 95% of what people want to do today, but only has 1% market share. Our belief is that the code is largely not the limiting factor for adoption now. It's all the pieces that go around the code. It's education, it's marketing, it's lobbying, it's business development, etc. These are big tasks which are critical to success, even more so than the code itself (think AOL). I know this won't be a popular thing to stay on a mailing list with "devel" in the title, but it's where we believe linux is and what we believe needs to happen to get to the next level. This doesn't mean the code isn't important, it is but there are other critical elements.
We need Lindows.com and 10 more thriving companies to help with the expense of educating, lobbying, marketing, etc. desktop solutions. It's expensive to do those things and a burden that needs to be shared by several companies because the job is so enormous and the competitor so strong. The Linux community, especially the desktop community needs healthy ongoing companies to put in capital, organization, and other support. If we can put a few million more people running Linux on the desktop, then magical things will happen. Drivers for linux will be available, higher quality linux software will emerge, more OEMs will offer linux as an option, devices will have linux interfaces, governments will view linux differently, etc.
There are some small, but meaningful for-profit companies out there today in linux (such as codeweavers and transgaming). The more companies in the linux desktop space there are, the more companies that will be able to pay their rates on an ongoing basis and hire them to code great products. There's tremendous opportunity and the more companies out there the better.
As for our marketing message, it's designed for my Grandma. Anytime there's a word on the website she doesn't understand she calls me up. Try explaining a recursive acronym to your Grandma. Yikes. Our goal with Lindows.com is to bring Linux to the segment of the world who thinks linux is spelled with a 'y' and is a small bobcat.
-- MR
Lindows.com michael@lindows.com 858-410-5941
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