IANAL, yada, yada
[nor can my involvement with Wine be considered anything more than minor]
Patrik wrote:
Companies in this group have several choices:
- Don't use new improvement in the main Wine tree, only resync then a new major version of the application should be released.
- Maintain a tree by themselves, continually resyncing in order to make even minor version take advantage of new improvements in the new Wine tree.
I just want to throw a couple of ideas out about using an LGPL license. There's a lot of people with a heck of lot more at stake than me, and ultimately they deserve to have their opinions weighed more heavily than mine. Ultimately these ideas stem from the practice of licensing software rather than the theory (which is where this thread was headed).
First, the LGPL doesn't really ever give a time frame for modifications to be released back. We can safely assume that it means "in a timely manner", since in practice this is how it works. I think we could collectively agree that a company such as Transgaming could be allowed a grace period in order to submit their modifications back. Whether this is a week or a year can be debated. If for no other reason than to ensure clean code. Now you may argue that a year is too long, but keep in mind that the modifications do have to be released, and if it takes them a year the amount of work required for a resync may impact other operations.
Second, the LGPL doesn't state how the modifications have to be released. In practice this is done electronically via patch files or access to a modified tree. But there's no reason why the modifications couldn't be released on handwritten post-it notes available by request only. In this manner there is a non-trivial amount of work required to integrate the changes.
------ Brian Vincent vinn@theshell.com
On Sat, Feb 09, 2002 at 10:48:46AM -0800, vinn wrote:
Second, the LGPL doesn't state how the modifications have to be released. In practice this is done electronically via patch files or access to a modified tree. But there's no reason why the modifications couldn't be released on handwritten post-it notes available by request only. In this manner there is a non-trivial amount of work required to integrate the changes.
Yes there is. The LGPL is very specific in stating that all modifications MUST be published (not just upon request). Also, source code must be the preferred form for making modifications to a work -- anyone trying to publish their changes on a set of post-its (which I think you'll agree is a deliberate attempt to circumvent the LGPL) is likely to find themselves on the losing end of a lawsuit.
Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
On Sat, 9 Feb 2002, vinn wrote:
First, the LGPL doesn't really ever give a time frame for modifications to be released back. We can safely assume that it means "in a timely manner", since in practice this is how it works. I think we could collectively agree that a company such as Transgaming could be allowed a grace period in order to submit their modifications back. Whether this is a week or a year can be debated. If for no other reason than to ensure clean code. Now you may argue that a year is too long, but keep in mind that the modifications do have to be released, and if it takes them a year the amount of work required for a resync may impact other operations.
Nope, as soon as you distribute someting built upon the LGPL library to a 3rd party you MUST include the source for the library (including any patches you made).
One could write such a graceperiod clause into the license, as suggested in other posts, but I don't think it would work in practise.
The license would still have to require that the modified source be included with the distribution as a form of "escrow". Otherwise it would be impossble to guarantee that it really gets "freed" when the graceperiod ends.
This gives us two obstacles for companies that build their business on selling improved derivates of Wine:
They might not want to release the sourcecode of their work. Maby because of silly company policies or because they would now be the ones carrying the risk of getting ripped off by dishonest people.
They will only be able to guarantee revenue during the timelimit. If the limit is to short they won't risk it. If the limit is to long the patches will be worthless to the community when they finally get released.
For example TransGaming states that they will release their work when they have recouped their costs. Would they risk it and accept a timelimit?
Regards, Fredrik
-
Fredrik Ohrn -
Steve Langasek -
vinn