People,
I am sorry I have to fuel the flames, but I have to say what I have to say.
First, and formost, we have now heard the oppinion of two big (from Wine POV) commercial players: Gav and Jeremy. Now, it was painfully obvious to me that Jeremy had the power of reason on his side, while Gav only a strong emotional impulse. And there's reason for that -- the LGPL make a lot more sense for Wine.
We've heard countless arguments why that's not that case. A lot of them where simply nonsense. The few that made some sense, were ALL based on a false premise: that Wine is a monolithic product.
Now, this is a _fundamental_ point that is ignored over and over again: Wine is a _collection_ of products, just like a Linux distribution. Which means that the viral aspect of the LGPL _stops_ at every DLL boundary. It is easy to see now that this does not preclude most commercial implementations. In fact, it encourages them givin them a level playing field. Just like Linux does.
People, for crying out loud, _think_ about it, and the conclusion will jump right out at you. THIS IS WHAT WE WANT: -- if a company invests a _little_ to improve a DLL, we should have no moral problem requireing them to contribute that back. Since it's just a little contribution, no business will be destroyed because of it. -- if a company makes a huge improvement (like Transgaming), they can simply drop the original Wine code, and keep everything propriatary. Now, compared to the _huge_ improvement, the cost of reimplementing the mostly non-working Wine code should be trivial.
Bottom line is: -- are we raising the bar for comercial companies with a LGPL licence? YES! -- how _much_ are we raising it? BY A TRIVIALLY SMALL AMOUNT! -- do we invalidate TG business model? NO!
I'll say this: if Alexandre will start maintaining a LGPL tree, I will submit my code only as LGPL. Everybody who believes even _a_little_ in an LGPL solution should do the same.
-- Dimi.