But the second more important question was (in my words): Why should I buy a Wine distribution from you?
If you are forced to contribute back everything I can just do:
cvs update ; ./configure ; make install
What I and other have been trying to say is that some business models like consulting business makes sense with a LGPL:ed Wine but others like Transgaming:s might not. Read what Gavriel wrote in his first(?) reply again.
I have been avoiding this debate although reading it closely. However i thought i would step up to the plate on this one, as someone whose salary depends on Jeremy's vision.
The simple of it is.. you, Patrik, would not buy a Wine distribution form us. Why would you? You are a developer, and a wine developer on top of that. If your critical app crashes you can just hack on the code and make it work. In fact we dont really expect anyone on this list to buy a Wine distribution from us.
Yes, that is pretty obvious.
However if a company unfamiliar with Wine, or even linux wants to get a critical app working on Linux using Wine they have to choose. The could hire a developer and have that person figure out wine and do the work, or buy a distribution of Wine supported by proven Wine developers.
It is these sorts of people and companies that we want to target. And financially Patrik's money for his license or even the money form all the wine developers would be nearly insignificant compared to a 100+ seat site license.
The problem is not that I or the other Wine developers don't pay.
The problem is that the company needing a 100+ seat license runs Red Hat, SuSE or Mandrake or some other Linux distribution.
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.
Sure Red Hat might write a contract with you instead but then perhaps they consider you a competitor and hire me instead or perhaps they believe I'm better or whatever.
As a developer who has worked on far too many proprietary Wine trees and seen all the fights the Jeremy has gone through. I want to be assured that i can give my code back to the wine community.
Assurance about some things can be given but everything has a price. Will you pay it? Will it really do what you expect it does?
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.
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Gerhard W. Gruber -
Patrik Stridvall