YES. I think switching changing the Wine license to the LGPL is a VERY good idea.
If the license isn't changed, Wine is going to continue to suffer from code forks. The current license encourages companies to take Wine, make a proprietary fix, and keep the result proprietary, which means that no one else gets the benefit and the work is fragmented. This is already happening, as Steve Langasek noted:
One thing to bear in mind is that others already ARE forking the Wine code... Other companies are forking with no intention to contribute back (see Lindows.com); still others (Transgaming) have made reintegration of their work contingent on turning a[n] profit.
As Wine becomes more capable, there will be more companies who do this, taking but never contibuting.
I agree with Dan Kegel, who said:
It's about time. Putting Wine under the xGPL is the best way I can think of to ensure its future. The xGPL makes it possible for competitors to cooperate for their common good - which is pretty amazing. As Bob Young said .. "There's been a fundamental problem of getting industry consortium to work together... But we don't have a single corporate lawyer in the room. We haven't signed a single licence among any of us... With the GPL, we have eliminated the need for trust."
In my opinion, the LGPL more accurately reflects how most Wine developers _actually_ work. I think many contibutors expect that anyone who improves Wine itself will give those contributions back to the community, while still allowing proprietary programs to use Wine as a library or infrastructure. The LGPL merely changes this expectation into an enforceable requirement.
#include <standard_disclaimer.h>
--- David A. Wheeler dwheeler@ida.org