Rick Romero (rick@valeoinc.com) writes:
As long as I'm sending this, I might as well make a comment on the license. We all know money makes the world go round. If the current license makes WINE more enticing to businesses, it should stay with that model. If the LGPL encourages investment (time or money), then WINE should move that way. IMHO, it appears the current license is best in the long run.
I agree.
The biggest issue I've seen so far is people ego's going out of control when they've shared their work with the public, and someone else hasn't returned their share (and possibly making money off of it).
Perhaps a simple economic analysis would help to assuage those egos.
If WINE is available at no cost to any user, its market value as a product (defined as what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller for a license to use it) is zero. No one will pay money for something that's readily available for free. (They might pay a small amount for the service of pressing it onto a plastic disc, but with today's Internet there's no need even to do that.) Yes, its intrinsic value is higher, but what matters to users is market value -- what they have to pay to get it.
Given that the market value of WINE, as distributed at no cost over the Net by the WINE project, is zero, anyone who hopes to sell a version for money must add sufficient value to get users to pay for it. This added value must not only be worth the money that customers pay (or word will get around and the company will make no sales) -- it must also be enough to overcome the transaction costs that the user incurs (filling out a Web form, paying shipping costs, waiting for delivery, worrying about credit card fraud, picking up the package at the post office, etc). And the seller of the value-added product will have a tough time convincing the user that the added value is sufficient to warrant the purchase. Is the no-cost version "good enough?" As WINE improves, it will be -- for more and more users.
Thus, anyone who hopes to create a value added version of the product has a tough row to hoe. He or she must add a LOT of value -- and also provide support services, infrastructure for distribution, a sales staff, marketing, and much, much more. And he or she must stay ahead of the no-cost version, which over time will likely duplicate the most important value added features of the commerical release.
Finally (and most importantly), if users DO buy the value added product, every cent they pay will be not for the original product (whose market value, as entioned above, is tautologically zero) but for the value added by the vendor. Thus, no developer of WINE can claim that the vendor is "making money off of" WINE. EVERY CENT will be due not to what the WINE project did, but to the value added. If the vendor is able to make money at all (and it's a long shot), he or she thoroughly deserves it. And every copy sold will benefit the WINE project, because the project's reputation will be enhanced by the vendor's success and the vendor will become more and more able to contribute code back to the project. (The vendor MUST, of course, retain some of its code so as to provide unique value; otherwise -- again -- no one will pay and everything falls apart. But at the same time, it benefits from contributing code with less strategic value, because the project will maintain it.)
It may be that the vendor won't be equal to the task of adding sufficient value to stay in business. But if he or she does, it's a win/win. The project benefits from an enhanced reputation and from code that's returned to it because it's in the vendor's interest to do so. It's thus in the project's interest to help, not hurt, the vendor.
The (L)GPL destroys this delicately balanced symbiotic relationship by making it impossible for the vendor to add unique value. As a result, the scenario described above can't happen, and it's a lose/lose rather than a win/win. The only entity that wins is the FSF, whose stated purpose is to prevent any commercial software vendor from surviving.
--Brett Glass
On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 11:31:37AM -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
Thus, anyone who hopes to create a value added version of the product has a tough row to hoe. He or she must add a LOT of value -- and also provide support services, infrastructure for distribution, a sales staff, marketing, and much, much more. And he or she must stay ahead of the no-cost version, which over time will likely duplicate the most important value added features of the commerical release.
The (L)GPL destroys this delicately balanced symbiotic relationship by making it impossible for the vendor to add unique value. As a result, the scenario described above can't happen, and it's a lose/lose rather than a win/win. The only entity that wins is the FSF, whose stated purpose is to prevent any commercial software vendor from surviving.
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover/
Jeremy White, the man who posted the request for feedback that spawned this discussion, the developer who is encouraging the Wine community to adopt the LGPL, works for a company whose principal software product (though not their only source of revenue) is a bundled package of a piece of proprietary glue code and Wine functionality.
Let me repeat. The person recommending the LGPL to us sells a proprietary program built on top of Wine as part of the business model for his company.
Now, do the people arguing that the LGPL would destroy all chance for people to make a profit believe that Jeremy is stupid, or out to get you?
Steve Langasek, Satisfied Holder of a CrossOver Plugin License
At 11:31 AM 2/8/02 -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
Perhaps a simple economic analysis would help to assuage those egos.
Hey, I never thought about it this way, but I must agree that your analysis is an interesting and valid viewpoint... Helped me a lot to see things from another point of view.
Just want to add why it is in the interest of the Company to contribute code back: this is to prevent the codebases from drifting away too much. If this happens, the company will no longer be able to benefit from the Open Wine codebase...
Roland
At 02:10 PM 2/8/2002, Roland wrote:
Just want to add why it is in the interest of the Company to contribute code back: this is to prevent the codebases from drifting away too much. If this happens, the company will no longer be able to benefit from the Open Wine codebase...
Very true! The work of re-integrating changes into each version becomes more and more difficult over time. It's really only worth it for a vendor NOT to contribute code if it's for a major value-added feature that's necessary to sell the product.
--Brett
On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 11:31:37AM -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
Perhaps a simple economic analysis would help to assuage those egos.
[good writing snipped]
Finally (and most importantly), if users DO buy the value added product, every cent they pay will be not for the original product (whose market value, as entioned above, is tautologically zero) but for the value added by the vendor. Thus, no developer of WINE can claim that the vendor is "making money off of" WINE. EVERY CENT will be due not to what the WINE project did, but to the value added. If the vendor is able to make money at all (and it's a
Plain WRONG :)
If Wine wasn't there at all, then the vendor of such a package would have to create *everything* from scratch. And that argument still counts.
Yes, in order to make people buy some "value-added" version of Wine would require HUGE efforts on the part of the vendor, but without the Wine basics he would be even MUCH worse off.
Thus I don't buy your "EVERY CENT" part AT ALL.
This is the last part of your description, which sounds rather wrong to me. Anyway, the parts before that were very good, I think.
At 03:25 PM 2/8/2002, Andreas Mohr wrote:
If Wine wasn't there at all, then the vendor of such a package would have to create *everything* from scratch.
And would probably not be able to do so. So, we'd all be worse off as a result.
It's truly wonderful to have a base of publicly available, truly free software upon which everyone can try to build things (and, if they need to invest money in building them, sell the results when they're done). If it weren't for the BSD TCP/IP stack, for example, there would not be an Internet. It's only because virtually every operating system -- commercial and non-commercial -- could integrate parts of BSD freely that we're able to have this conversation today. (Come to think of it, WINE probably wouldn't exist either.)
--Brett
On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 04:07:30PM -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
At 03:25 PM 2/8/2002, Andreas Mohr wrote:
If Wine wasn't there at all, then the vendor of such a package would have to create *everything* from scratch.
And would probably not be able to do so. So, we'd all be worse off as a result.
Sure (which I didn't address in my explanation) I merely wanted to drive home the point that that EVERY CENT part is wrong. I'm all for a wealthy mix of competition and "innovation" (sic !) in the software market. As long as no software company doesn't "rob" our work for very good cash without giving anything back...
It's truly wonderful to have a base of publicly available, truly free software upon which everyone can try to build things (and, if they need to invest money in building them, sell the results when they're done). If it weren't for the BSD TCP/IP stack, for example, there would not be an Internet. It's only because virtually every operating system -- commercial and non-commercial -- could integrate parts of BSD freely that we're able to have this conversation today. (Come to think of it, WINE probably wouldn't exist either.)
Full ACK.
At 04:57 PM 2/8/2002, Andreas Mohr wrote:
Sure (which I didn't address in my explanation) I merely wanted to drive home the point that that EVERY CENT part is wrong.
The "every cent" part is absolutely true. Let me explain why via a simple scenario. Let's suppose, for a minute, that the user first obtained WINE for free (as he certainly could do!) and then bought an add-on enhancement package made by the third party vendor. This package contains none of the original WINE code -- just patches.
I'm sure you'll agree that, in this scenario, the only thing that the user paid for was the enhancements, not WINE itself. Again, every cent that the user paid was for the enhancements.
Now, the only difference between this scenario and shipping a modified version of WINE is that, in the latter case, the vendor is making things a bit more convenient for the user. Nothing whatsoever wrong with that.
To put it another way: To claim that the vendor who provides enhancements to WINE is "making money off of" WINE is akin to claiming that a company that makes accessories for cars -- say, fuzzy dice -- is "making money off of" the automobile manufacturer because it is enhancing the manufacturer's car. Just as anyone has the right to make and sell fuzzy dice, anyone should have the right to sell enhancements for WINE. Since WINE is available to anyone at no cost, what the user is paying for, if s/he buys a disc with the enhancements already integrated, is the enhancements.
Do these analogies make things clearer?
--Brett
On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 10:30:08PM -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
At 04:57 PM 2/8/2002, Andreas Mohr wrote:
Sure (which I didn't address in my explanation) I merely wanted to drive home the point that that EVERY CENT part is wrong.
The "every cent" part is absolutely true. Let me explain why via a simple scenario. Let's suppose, for a minute, that the user first obtained WINE for free (as he certainly could do!) and then bought an add-on enhancement package made by the third party vendor. This package contains none of the original WINE code -- just patches.
I'm sure you'll agree that, in this scenario, the only thing that the user paid for was the enhancements, not WINE itself. Again, every cent that the user paid was for the enhancements.
True.
Now, the only difference between this scenario and shipping a modified version of WINE is that, in the latter case, the vendor is making things a bit more convenient for the user. Nothing whatsoever wrong with that.
To put it another way: To claim that the vendor who provides enhancements to WINE is "making money off of" WINE is akin to claiming that a company that makes accessories for cars -- say, fuzzy dice -- is "making money off of" the automobile manufacturer because it is enhancing the manufacturer's car.
Nope, there is a very fundamental and fatal difference here.
Or do they sell the accessory at a very moderate price - and also include the car for free ??
Damn, I think I really need a new 1000W car amplifier :) (for the new car that I'll get with that deal)
Just as anyone has the right to make and sell fuzzy dice, anyone should have the right to sell enhancements for WINE. Since WINE is available to anyone at no cost, what the user is paying for, if s/he buys a disc with the enhancements already integrated, is the enhancements.
Do these analogies make things clearer?
Nope :)
*If* the company is providing a separate "Wine enhancements" patch, then they deserve every cent for the *patch*.
If it's integrated into the main tree as a bundled offer, well... ;)
Damn, I didn't really want to waste more time on a relatively useless by-product of the license war :), but somehow I thought I still had to reply to make things clear :)
At 12:01 AM 2/9/2002, Andreas Mohr wrote:
To put it another way: To claim that the vendor who provides enhancements to WINE is "making money off of" WINE is akin to claiming that a company that makes accessories for cars -- say, fuzzy dice -- is "making money off of" the automobile manufacturer because it is enhancing the manufacturer's car.
Nope, there is a very fundamental and fatal difference here.
Or do they sell the accessory at a very moderate price
- and also include the car for free ??
A maker of fuzzy dice obviously can't bundle the car due to its price. But WINE doesn't cost anything, so the maker of enhancements for WINE can include WINE and do the integration in advance to make things easier for the user. This is a good thing, not a bad one. Both the vendor and the user benefit.
--Brett
Brett Glass wrote:
<SNIP>
Do these analogies make things clearer?
--Brett
Disclaimer: I have not contributed to the wine project for several years, and the contributions I did make were in the form of bug reports, back before it could run Solitaire ('94, or thereabouts). So I have very little say in much of anything Wine-related.
However, I can't sit by reading this drivel any longer without speaking my mind.
Brett Glass has been a commercial coder, and a journalist, for quite a few years. He is very opinionated on every subject he discusses. For that, I respect him.
And because he refuses to use either facts or logic simultaneously, he loses that respect. But beyond that, I see a core difference of philosophy here.
First and foremost, this argument seems to divide people into two camps: those that think money is the most important aspect of life, and those that think that people are the most important. The former see no problem with forcing developers to make their code accessible to corporate exploitation. The latter sees no problem in forcing corporations to play fairly by placing restrictions on the use of their code.
This "zero cent" argument of his does not hold water. If a group builds a cathedral, and a second group charges for tours of that cathedral while never contributing back to the builders, how is the money made *not* based *entirely* on the cathedral? You can say that people can tour the cathedral on their own, without a guide, so what people are paying for is the guide; but without the cathedral, *there would be no guide.* The second group is making money off the hard work of the first, with no requirement to provide any support.
In biology, we call this "parasitism."
Sometimes parasites turn out to be symbiotes. This is what Mr. Glass is arguing-- it's good to put up with parasites, because they can make money . . . and perhaps they will turn out to be symbiotes. But the main goal is that the parasites make money, because projects are worthless unless they can make money.
Mr. Glass, esteemed Wine developers: I submit that the GPL and LGPL are merely resistance against parasites. Yes, it means the projects they protect may also miss out on some symbiotes; but it isn't necessary. Look at Red Hat, which is finally starting to look profitable. There is no denying they have formed a successful symbiotic relationship with a truly GPLd product; and before them, Cygnus (which did offer proprietary *add-ons* to the GNU development suite) also had a successful business model based on GPLd software.
These arguments will not sway Mr. Glass; he is immune to logic and evidence that does not support his side. (I too am immune, and so he and I are not much different. Keep that in mind when reading *both* of us.)
Every developer that writes Free (libre) software does so for a different reason. Some wish protection against parasites, while others do not care. Me, I'm of the former class. (Not that any of my code could possibly be considered worthwhile.) But I respect the decisions of the developers.
And if going to the LGPL means losing Brett Glass as a potential contributer: Bonus!
- Tony
At 11:07 AM 2/9/2002, Anthony Taylor wrote:
First and foremost, this argument seems to divide people into two camps: those that think money is the most important aspect of life, and those that think that people are the most important. The former see no problem with forcing developers to make their code accessible to corporate exploitation. The latter sees no problem in forcing corporations to play fairly by placing restrictions on the use of their code.
I'm afraid that your argument above makes many assumptions and assertions which are unwarranted and/or simply false.
First, you imply that a desire for code to be truly free for all to use, for any purpose, is a desire to benefit corporations rather than individuals. This is not the case. It is individual programmers and small businesses that are hurt most by the inability to use existing code, because they do not have the resources to "reprogram the wheel." A large corporation such as Microsoft can easily hire programmers to reimplement anything. An individual programmer or a small business (perhaps one that would like to compete with Microsoft!) can't. Thus, licenses such as the (L)GPL strike hardest not at Microsoft but at its nascent competition. The MIT and BSD licenses benefit *people* -- developers who wish to work on interesting problems rather than being caught on a treadmill, redoing what has already been done.
Second, you imply that the MIT or BSD license is about "forcing developers to make their code accesible to corporate exploitation." In fact, these licenses do not compel programmers to make their code accessible to anyone. It is the licenses of the FSF -- a corporation which has amassed perhaps the single largest hoard of source code in the world so as to destroy programmers' livelihoods -- that are coercive.
This "zero cent" argument of his does not hold water. If a group builds a cathedral, and a second group charges for tours of that cathedral while never contributing back to the builders, how is the money made *not* based *entirely* on the cathedral?
It is for the tour. The cathedral is a public resource which anyone can enter for free. Therefore, what the customers are paying for -- willingly -- is the services of the tour guide. Q.E.D.
--Brett
At 11:31 AM 2/8/02 -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
Perhaps a simple economic analysis would help to assuage those egos.
[SNIP]
The (L)GPL destroys this delicately balanced symbiotic relationship by making it impossible for the vendor to add unique value. As a result, the scenario described above can't happen, and it's a lose/lose rather than a win/win. The
I agree with most of what you said, but have a few NEW questions:
1. Companies that benefit from WINE in this way have no incentive to contribute back. So why should they? That means that this kind of companies are of no big help to WINE, so why should we help them with the licensing scheme?
2. Companies like CodeWeavers that have a different business model probably would share code back even with the xGPL. They don't lose anything for doing it. And with the xGPL they don't have to fear that a competitor will make money out of their work. In fact any producer of a Windows app is a potential contributer to WINE, since he will help to make its app run under Linux. A xGPLed WINE would help ensure that the improvements made by those companies come back to the community. This of course without loss to the contributer, since selling WINE will not be his business.
So after all it seems that maybe xGPL is an advantage, even if it prevents some companies from making money from WINE.
What do you think about that?
Roland
At 12:10 PM 2/14/2002, Roland wrote:
I agree with most of what you said, but have a few NEW questions:
- Companies that benefit from WINE in this way have no incentive to contribute back.
It may not seem obvious at first, but in fact they have a strong incentive to contribute back. Any patch that's not contributed back to the main source tree must be re-integrated again and again -- and there's often no other way to do this than by hand. It only pays to reserve code that's very strategic.
So why should they? That means that this kind of companies are of no big help to WINE, so why should we help them with the licensing scheme?
It *is* mutually beneficial to maintain a truly free license. See above.
- Companies like CodeWeavers that have a different business model probably would share code back even with the xGPL.
I have not been able to come up with any business model where it pays not to give back non-strategic code.
They don't lose anything for doing it. And with the xGPL they don't have to fear
Why is this a "fear?" In exactly what way does it hurt CodeWeavers when someone else is making money via products that are not in direct competition with what CodeWeavers sells?
that a competitor will make money out of their work.
As explained in an earlier message, a company that uses the code in a product can only make money from its *own* work.
In fact any producer of a Windows app is a potential contributer to WINE, since he will help to make its app run under Linux.
Only if he sees Linux as a platform worth supporting! There is still significant expense involved in doing a WINE port, and he has to be convinced that he'll make money in the Linux world. (Which is by no means a sure thing. Borland is losing its shirt on Kylix because most Linux users apparently won't pay for tools.) Use of Linux to run Windows apps must become widespread before you'll see many ports. And this won't happen if WINE isn't truly free (see below), because companies such as Lindows won't be around to promote the idea.
A xGPLed WINE would help ensure that the improvements made by those companies come back to the community.
I disagree. Many will turn tail and run. Others will fork the last truly free version. And the rest will try to make money but fail, because they cannot differentiate their products due to the (L)GPL.
Have I answered your questions adequately?
--Brett
On Thu, 14 Feb 2002 16:10, Roland wrote:
At 11:31 AM 2/8/02 -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
Perhaps a simple economic analysis would help to assuage those egos.
[SNIP]
The (L)GPL destroys this delicately balanced symbiotic relationship by making it impossible for the vendor to add unique value. As a result, the scenario described above can't happen, and it's a lose/lose rather than a win/win. The
I agree with most of what you said, but have a few NEW questions:
- Companies that benefit from WINE in this way have no incentive to
contribute back. So why should they? That means that this kind of companies are of no big help to WINE, so why should we help them with the licensing scheme?
Are you saying that because a company has no incentive to contribute that we should force them even though they (Lindows and TransGaming) are contributing? I do not mean to be rude, but that sounds a little spiteful.
- Companies like CodeWeavers that have a different business model
probably would share code back even with the xGPL. They don't lose anything for doing it. And with the xGPL they don't have to fear that a competitor will make money out of their work.
If they will share regardless of the license, there is no reason to change the license for this.
In fact any producer of a Windows app is a potential contributer to WINE, since he will help to make its app run under Linux. A xGPLed WINE would help ensure that the improvements made by those companies come back to the community. This of course without loss to the contributer, since selling WINE will not be his business.
The license can be BSD, X11, Apache, LGPL, GPL or MS-EULA and have the same effect on these companies, therefore, a license change for this reason is moot.
So after all it seems that maybe xGPL is an advantage, even if it prevents some companies from making money from WINE.
I have still not seen a good reason to change the license.
What do you think about that?
Personally, I think the movement to change the license is political as I have yet to read a reason to change it that was not about enforcing code contributions. This is not including Jeremy's request which I think is commercial in nature.
Sean -------------- scf@farley.org
-
Andreas Mohr -
Anthony Taylor -
Brett Glass -
Roland -
Sean Farley -
Steve Langasek