At 11:24 PM 2/10/2002, Marcus Brubaker wrote:
I doubt they would release "absolutely as much as they can" because releasing *anything* can potentially forfeit a part of competitive advantage.
Not true. There's always a cost/benefit analysis to be done. Since NOT contributing code incurs a heavy cost in manpower, and also (if it's a bug fix) reduces the public's confidence in WINE and derivatives of it, it really pays to do so unless the code is highly strategic. Witness what has happened in the BSD world.
Let me explain that a bit. Having worked in a corporate programming environment for quite a while now I've had a chance to see how a lot of decisions get made. The absolute one thing that can kill a project is uncertainty. With a BSD type license you have a LOT of uncertainty.
Not so. With a BSD license you have a simple license that says what it says and has been upheld in court. With an FSF license you have a huge document, with a long block of misleading propaganda at the top that could invalidate the whole thing (if the "recitals" in a contract are false or misleading, the entire contract is often invalid). The FSF licenses have NEVER been upheld or even fully interpreted by the courts. Want to talk about uncertainty? With one of the FSF's licenses, you truly do not know where you stand. Even if you ignore the fact that they're discriminatory (and discriminate against you as a programmer!), this should be sufficient reason to stay far, far away from these licenses.
--Brett Glass