Patrik Stridvall ps@leissner.se writes:
Even according to a strict interpretation of the LGPL they would just have to provide their code in seperate files so everything could be relinked when new versions of Wine was released.
It seems you really don't understand the LGPL. Modifications made to a library released under the LGPL are a derivative work of this library, and have to be LGPL no matter if they are in separate files or not.
Saying the ALL modifications gives rise to a derived works even if distributed seperately is a ridiculous proposition that is the main problem with (L)GPL.
As I have been trying to explain is that the courts are unlikely to support this, at least not 100%. The question is where is borderline is. At the extreme end the courts might totaly reject the doctrine of derived work in favour of the doctrine of combined work what I have been talking about in previous mails.
If somebody (A) only provide drop in files that replaces some functions say the Crypto API in ADVAPI32, they are not any combined work since they are 100% written by A. Sure the application/library as a whole is of course a combined work, but that doesn't matter if you do not distribute it as a whole.
This is the standard interpretation that just about anybody except you agrees with.
If you think everybody agrees what a derived work is you are badly mistaken. Even Richard Stallman himself admit that the power of (L)GPL is dependent on how far the courts will allow the doctrine of derived work.
Note that I do not pretend to know how the courts will rule. But I do know that sticking the head in the sand and pretending that (L)GPL doesn't have large potential holes in it is quite naive and potentially dangerous.
Patrik Stridvall ps@leissner.se writes:
If somebody (A) only provide drop in files that replaces some functions say the Crypto API in ADVAPI32, they are not any combined work since they are 100% written by A. Sure the application/library as a whole is of course a combined work, but that doesn't matter if you do not distribute it as a whole.
It may or may not matter depending on what your intent is. If you distribute them separately with the intent of getting around the restrictions of the license it's unlikely the court will side with you. Anyway this really doesn't matter at all.
Note that I do not pretend to know how the courts will rule. But I do know that sticking the head in the sand and pretending that (L)GPL doesn't have large potential holes in it is quite naive and potentially dangerous.
Then if the LGPL holes are dangerous, the X11 license should be even more dangerous; after all it's a much larger hole than the LGPL will ever have. I still don't understand where you are trying to go with your argument.
No, of course the LGPL doesn't provide absolute protection; nothing does, and I don't think absolute protection is desirable either. There are some things that the LGPL clearly allows, some that it clearly forbids, and a number of border cases, that frankly are only interesting to people who want to try to get around the license restrictions. And what would be the point of doing that? If the license is not acceptable to someone, they don't have to use the code. Who would risk bad PR and potential lawsuits just to prove that they can find a loophole in the LGPL?
You really make it sound like the LGPL is some kind of unexplored wilderness that we shouldn't venture into. The fact is that a large majority of free software projects use either the GPL or the LGPL, and in practice it works just fine for them, just as I'm confident it would work just fine for us.
On 2001.12.15 16:32 Alexandre Julliard wrote:
Patrik Stridvall ps@leissner.se writes:
If somebody (A) only provide drop in files that replaces some functions say the Crypto API in ADVAPI32, they are not any combined work since they are 100% written by A. Sure the application/library as a whole is of course a combined work, but that doesn't matter if you do not distribute it as a whole.
It may or may not matter depending on what your intent is. If you distribute them separately with the intent of getting around the restrictions of the license it's unlikely the court will side with you. Anyway this really doesn't matter at all.
I think this had been beaten to death now, and I think your previous mail agreeing with me that if it was seperate from the rest of the functionality then it'd be allowed (denying it wouldn't make sense really).
As in the case of your CreateWindow example from your other mail, as I said, that is a gray area, and see below for my comments on that.
Note that I do not pretend to know how the courts will rule. But I do know that sticking the head in the sand and pretending that (L)GPL doesn't have large potential holes in it is quite naive and potentially dangerous.
Then if the LGPL holes are dangerous, the X11 license should be even more dangerous; after all it's a much larger hole than the LGPL will ever have. I still don't understand where you are trying to go with your argument.
This has been my argument against Patrick exactly. Some protection is better than none at all.
No, of course the LGPL doesn't provide absolute protection; nothing does, and I don't think absolute protection is desirable either. There are some things that the LGPL clearly allows, some that it clearly forbids, and a number of border cases, that frankly are only interesting to people who want to try to get around the license restrictions. And what would be the point of doing that? If the license is not acceptable to someone, they don't have to use the code. Who would risk bad PR and potential lawsuits just to prove that they can find a loophole in the LGPL?
Answer: Someone who believed that the cost of fighting the lawsuit was less than the profit to be made. Basically you are right in saying that very few if any people would be willing to knowingly violate the LGPL and risk losing a court battle.
About your trichotomy proof: right on. There are some things the LGPL clearly allows (which I think are good and will allow many proprietary developers to succeed). There are some things the LGPL clearly forbids, which I think is the real advantage over the X11 license. And then there are some borderline cases where we shouldn't count on protection but hopefully blatant violations will not be allowed.
You really make it sound like the LGPL is some kind of unexplored wilderness that we shouldn't venture into. The fact is that a large majority of free software projects use either the GPL or the LGPL, and in practice it works just fine for them, just as I'm confident it would work just fine for us.
Agreed. The LGPL is a very well-written fairly clear license. There are some borderline cases as mentioned, but this does not mean that we should thus throw the possibilty of LGPL completely out the window.
My reason for being involved in this discussion is simply to make sure no one has their hopes up on the borderline cases. I think the LGPL would be an excellent license for Wine.
IIRC when the license issue was discussed way back when there was a lot of turmoil on X11 vs. LGPL. In fact that was the main issue. I also think that most developers at that time were not too concerned about the hijacking of Wine code and thus found the X11 license acceptable.
And what was the reason for the original license change? Wasn't it because Wine had started to move from a hobby project into something that started to look reasonably useful. Useful enough to attract the attention of Corel and quite a few others? Useful enough to want to be absolutely sure that we had a good license that allowed everyone to use the code.
I think the reason we are seeing this discussion again is because Wine has again grown. For the time Wine has been licensed as X11 it has made sense because we weren't too close to a real out-of-the-tarball experience. At this point Wine is really starting to look like a project in its own right and I think a lot of people are realizing this.
I think one of the main things has been your work to bring USER more in line with a proper implementation. Not to discredit other acheivements, but USER has always kind of been a thorn in Wine's side.
It's starting to make more sense to start protecting developer's and user's rights since we have gone far beyond a hobby project. Now is the time to switch to LGPL, not further down the road when even more good code is released into essentially the public domain. I think this should definitely be done well before a 1.0 version comes out.
-Dave
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Alexandre Julliard -
David Elliott -
Patrik Stridvall