Well, I'm fairly convinced after reading his argument that LGPL is the right way to go. I think it's better for the Wine project over the long term.
Read my reply the Jeremy. Do you are really think the price is worth paying?
For those companies who have built a business model on closed source enhancements to Wine, there is still a way to play the game:
At some point Wine is going to improve to the point where the core code works well enough to do almost everything we need. There will always be room for improvement, but the action may shift to reimplementing Microsoft applications that have important APIs (Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player...).
I'm sure that Microsoft will change its EULAs to prohibit use of applications such as MSIE on a Non-Microsoft OS. It has already started doing this for some programs.
I don't think such paragraph are worth the paper they are written on and as long as the Microsoft trial is going on thet wouldn't dare even try.
Companies could respond by selling open or closed source reimplementations of these applications, bundled with a LGPL Wine. There will always be plenty of ways to add value on top of the core Wine code.
Will it? You don't think most of the market will be eaten up by the traditional Linux distributions (Debian, Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake etc) and possible Lindows?
Meanwhile, LGPL ensures that core code improvements will flow back to benefit all, not just those individuals and companies that have an altruistic bent.
Yes, but at a terrible price.
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Patrik Stridvall