Folks,
Here is the summary of the votes I received in answer to the request to switch to a copyleft-style license:
Agree Disagree Indifferent
All votes: 76 (70%) 15 (14%) 17 (16%)
Contributors: 39 (66%) 7 (12%) 13 (22%)
Contrib. weighted: 59 (64%) 13 (14%) 20 (22%)
The first line counts all the votes I received. The second line counts the votes of all people/companies who contributed some code to the project. The last line counts all contributors again but with each being given 1, 2, or 3 votes depending on the importance of his contributions (this evaluation is obviously a bit subjective, but I think the overall trend is clear).
The obvious result of this vote is that my previous conclusion was wrong: there is clearly widespread support in the community for a copyleft-style license. With 2 out of 3 contributors in favor of the switch, and less than 15% opposed to it, it's clear that we are going to proceed with the change.
We now have to decide the implementation details, like the exact license used, whether to require copyright assignments, etc. My suggestion is that we create a separate mailing list to discuss that, to avoid drowning wine-devel under yet another license flame war.
On 18 Feb 2002, Alexandre Julliard wrote:
We now have to decide the implementation details, like the exact license used, whether to require copyright assignments, etc. My suggestion is that we create a separate mailing list to discuss that, to avoid drowning wine-devel under yet another license flame war.
OK, I've created a wine-license list. You can subscribe at http://www.winehq.com/mailman/listinfo/wine-license or by sending mail to wine-license-request@winehq.com
Should discussions about where the X11 fork goes also be discussed there?
Well, if there continues to be a X11 fork (at least an official one) definatly sounds like a license implimentation issue - now it's been officially decided we're going to change..
Anyway, new list for talking about this stuff.. so...
END OF THREAD - MCP.
Should discussions about where the X11 fork goes also be discussed there?
-- Ender
Just my curiosity,
Can you do some kind of estimate (you don't have to count all the votes again...) On how this has changed during the discussion?
I know for myself that I was for LGPL as the discussion started but the latest couple of days have really changed my mind, listening to the different arguments in the debate. If the same thing applies to others, those figures might be misrepresentative.
...I'm not a bad looser, I simply want to assure that the figures actually reflects the current situation.
Best Regards,
Stefan Görling
On 18 Feb 2002, Alexandre Julliard wrote:
We now have to decide the implementation details, like the exact license used, whether to require copyright assignments, etc. My suggestion is that we create a separate mailing list to discuss that, to avoid drowning wine-devel under yet another license flame war.
OK, I've created a wine-license list. You can subscribe at http://www.winehq.com/mailman/listinfo/wine-license or by sending mail to wine-license-request@winehq.com
Should discussions about where the X11 fork goes also be discussed there?
On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 09:35:46AM +0100, Stefan Görling wrote:
Just my curiosity,
Can you do some kind of estimate (you don't have to count all the votes again...) On how this has changed during the discussion?
I know for myself that I was for LGPL as the discussion started but the latest couple of days have really changed my mind, listening to the different arguments in the debate. If the same thing applies to others, those figures might be misrepresentative.
I didn't vote because I don't really think I should (I rarely use wine, although I follow every message in wine-devel) so this message probably doesn't carry much weight at all (since I'm no developer and I didn't even vote anyway).
If you weren't too impressed by that, go read another message 'cause this one will bore you :)
I've never been much of a license person, but I did skim the GPL license and the LGPL also, to a lesser extent and quite liked the idea. The BSD one always seemed to be too loose and too much chance that it would lead to a company taking someone's hard work that they did for the community. In the past few days, after trying my best to catch up on wine-devel (still 170 license-related messages to read!) I've really begun to see what the BSD license is all about and that it isn't quite so dumb after all.
This all happened sometime between Alexandre calling for opinions and announcing the voting result.
I don't know about other people, but had I voted before, it would probably have been for an LGPLish license (if only because Brett Glass was annoying me with his strong statements against *GPL, RMS and the FSF, etc). Apologies to Brett - I'm starting to see your points now (at least about the licenses) although I think if you'd put your points a little gentler (wrong word but the closest I can think of) and with less of the anti-FSF rhetoric, maybe people would have found it easier to see your side of the argument.
Now, I'd probably prefer a BSD license - I can see its advantages for a large, well-established codebase.
GPL might be worth using for something small and simple that anyone could write themselves, although if that were the case, it probably doesn't make any difference whether it's BSD or (L)GPL.
*shrug* Not saying there should be another vote but I wonder if I was the only one who switched sides, so to speak - have to see what happens with the two trees I guess.
...I'm not a bad looser, I simply want to assure that the figures actually reflects the current situation.
If anyone was persuaded to favour BSD/X11/etc over LGPL, etc then you'll see them working on a BSD tree of Wine, not the GPL one, I suspect. The LGPL camp will work on the LGPL (or whatever) tree and the I-don't-care people will probably join them (since the LGPL tree would become the main development branch).
I wonder how many of the 'LGPL' people were actually very strongly in favour of a copyleft license... oh well.
It's been an interesting debate and one really worth watching (well, reading :)
Hope Wine continues to become an even bigger success whatever license it adopts (although the ability to run Exile from spidweb.com would be nice :)
When I get the time, I'll try looking into why it doesn't work (some GDI thing IIRC)
Egads, what a long message. Sorry guys (+ gals?)
Ove Kaaven ovehk@ping.uio.no writes:
OK, I've created a wine-license list. You can subscribe at http://www.winehq.com/mailman/listinfo/wine-license or by sending mail to wine-license-request@winehq.com
Thanks.
Should discussions about where the X11 fork goes also be discussed there?
Yes, please let's take everything there and keep wine-devel for development issues only.
Alexandre Julliard wrote:
OK, I've created a wine-license list. You can subscribe at http://www.winehq.com/mailman/listinfo/wine-license or by sending mail to wine-license-request@winehq.com
Will there be an NNTP interface as well? I hate mailing lists when I don't need to have one. :)
Gerhard W. Gruber wrote:
Alexandre Julliard wrote:
OK, I've created a wine-license list. You can subscribe at http://www.winehq.com/mailman/listinfo/wine-license or by sending mail to wine-license-request@winehq.com
Will there be an NNTP interface as well? I hate mailing lists when I don't need to have one. :)
It seemed to take awhile to show up, but the NNTP interface is working now for me. I agree, that is my preferred format.
Duane Clark wrote:
It seemed to take awhile to show up, but the NNTP interface is working now for me. I agree, that is my preferred format.
Thanks. I'm connected now. :)
On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 09:14:13AM +0100, Ove Kaaven wrote:
On 18 Feb 2002, Alexandre Julliard wrote:
We now have to decide the implementation details, like the exact license used, whether to require copyright assignments, etc. My suggestion is that we create a separate mailing list to discuss that, to avoid drowning wine-devel under yet another license flame war.
OK, I've created a wine-license list. You can subscribe at http://www.winehq.com/mailman/listinfo/wine-license or by sending mail to wine-license-request@winehq.com
Should discussions about where the X11 fork goes also be discussed there?
Umm, why wine-license ?
I thought that Jeremy's suggestion of wine-legal was a better idea...
On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Andreas Mohr wrote:
On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 09:14:13AM +0100, Ove Kaaven wrote:
On 18 Feb 2002, Alexandre Julliard wrote:
We now have to decide the implementation details, like the exact license used, whether to require copyright assignments, etc. My suggestion is that we create a separate mailing list to discuss that, to avoid drowning wine-devel under yet another license flame war.
OK, I've created a wine-license list. You can subscribe at http://www.winehq.com/mailman/listinfo/wine-license or by sending mail to wine-license-request@winehq.com
Should discussions about where the X11 fork goes also be discussed there?
Umm, why wine-license ?
I thought that Jeremy's suggestion of wine-legal was a better idea...
Hmm. I had probably Uwe's requests for wine-license in mind more than anything else, so must have missed that. But should we change the list name now?
Hmm. I had probably Uwe's requests for wine-license in mind more than anything else, so must have missed that. But should we change the list name now?
I don't think it's worth changing now; it's a pretty minor difference, IMHO.
Jer
On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 01:28:40PM -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
Hmm. I had probably Uwe's requests for wine-license in mind more than anything else, so must have missed that. But should we change the list name now?
I don't think it's worth changing now; it's a pretty minor difference, IMHO.
No, I don't think so.
It actually is a not-so-minor difference.
Legal stuff would include porting issues, legal action, stuff resulting from damages (yeah, I know, unlikely, since the license highly forbids that), ... --> far more useful than -license.
If you don't mind changing it, then it might be a good idea to do that before it's too late and too many people have subscribed. ;-)
At 08:21 PM 2/19/02 +0100, Ove Kaaven wrote:
Hmm. I had probably Uwe's requests for wine-license in mind more than anything else, so must have missed that. But should we change the list name now?
Yes, I think we should. But how? I propose we create a new mailing list first called: wine-license-list-name-change@winehq.com There we will discuss the name of the new list. After we have decided on the name of the new list by a voting process of course, we will make that new list. After that we can finally continue discussing wine-license...
:))) Hahaha, this is just a joke... Roland
At 07:25 PM 2/18/02 -0800, Alexandre Julliard wrote: [snip]
I hope this doesn't mean we choose a xGPL style license. It scares me to see how willingly the crowd is going down this one-way road where there is no way back. I since we shouldn't take this decision too hastyly. If we once switch we cannot go back. But with the BSD license, which is less retrictive and really gives freedom we can decide otherway at any later moment.
Roland
On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 01:57:16PM -0300, Roland wrote:
I hope this doesn't mean we choose a xGPL style license. It scares me to see how willingly the crowd is going down this one-way road where there is no way back. I since we shouldn't take this decision too hastyly. If we once switch we cannot go back. But with the BSD license, which is less retrictive and really gives freedom we can decide otherway at any later moment.
This is NOT a one way process : Mesa went, for example, from a LGPL license to the X11 license to be integrated into the XFree code base. As far as I know, Ogg Vorbis did the same, no ?
You just have to store somewhere the list of names of people who have submitted LGPLed patches and ask them if they agree or not to have their work relicensed.
Moreover, if Alexandre wants to release his patch as LGPL, it's his choice. He is using the fabled BSD freedom to do whatever he chooses with the code. You do not agree ? Well, you just had to choose another license than the BSD one :-) (sorry, I just had to write something like that).
The BSDist now just have to find an Alexandre replacement to work on their core Wine internals for their BSD fork :-)
Lionel
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Alexandre Julliard -
Andreas Mohr -
Duane Clark -
Gerhard W. Gruber -
Jeremy White -
Lionel Ulmer -
Ove Kaaven -
Roland -
Russell Howe -
Stefan Görling -
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