Patrik Stridvall wrote:
They turn to their respective distributor say Red Hat and say that they are prepared to pay $XXX per year for a better supported Wine. Red Hat in turn hires me (or some other on this list) to do this and I do:
cvs update ; ./configure ; make install
That is your problem.
I fail to see why this should be a problem. Once the code is written is (basically) free to use by the one who wrote it (or ordered it, depending on the agreements). Red Hat got his money in that case because it agreed to create that code. You got your money because you were hired by Red Hat. If Red Hat chooses now to release the code it still has the money and you still have your money. The only problem would be if it didn't release the code and some other customer would come along and asks for the same thing to be developed. In that case it might be worse (but for Red Hat) because it can now get paid a second time, while it won't get paid if the code is released. But that is a general problem of GPLed code and not specifically to Wine. I think that companies working with GPL code are well aware of that fact and their busines model must accomodate that fact.