David Elliott dfe@tgwbd.org wrote:
Thus what we really need is some entity that will always have an unlimited license to the complete wine codebase to do with it as it decides. I question assigning copyrights away from myself and to anyone else, is there some reason why signing an unlimited use license wouldn't be acceptable (and thus developers would still retain their own copyright) or is that effectively how it works anyway?
This scheme would make the license awkward, because you have to add in "oh, by the way, all the contributions you make will be given to winecorp with an unrestricted license" clause. It is far cleaner and simpler to require contributions to assign the copyright. OpenOffice does this.
Wine cannot stay X11 free-for-all forever. Reminds me of one of Roger Ebert's columns about the movie "It's a Wonderfull Life". Because the movie is now public domain, anyone can use the original print for whatever purpose. This includes colorizing it and then selling the colorized version for a lot of cash (thanks Ted... yeah right). The colorized version is a bastardization of the movie and is one of those cases where you almost wish that copyrights didn't expire. Especially considering that the director and the much of the cast were still alive to see this horrible, horrible thing. Wine is very much in the same position here. While we are not quite public domain we are so close that any distinction is a moot point.
*GPL wouldn't prevent the above either. Any "open source" license would let the above happen. As I said before, "freedom means others can do what you don't like"
-r
At 04:26 AM 2/14/2002, Roger Fujii wrote:
This scheme would make the license awkward, because you have to add in "oh, by the way, all the contributions you make will be given to winecorp with an unrestricted license" clause. It is far cleaner and simpler to require contributions to assign the copyright. OpenOffice does this.
The danger of this approach is that EVERYONE -- even contributors -- must go to the organization that owns the copyright and ask, "Mother, may I?" before doing things with the code. Commercial entities will have no guarantee that they'll be allowed to use even their own contributions -- especially if their competitors are part of the body that grants permissions. Politics can also rear their head, with favoritism toward specific vendors.
One of the nicest things about the current license is that you do not need to ask, wait, reveal your product plans to competitors (which will inevitably happen if they have representatives in the organization), and risk being denied permission to use the code. You can't run a business unless you can move ahead with confidence -- without having to ask "Mother, may I?" or tell competitors what you're up to.
--Brett
Brett Glass wrote:
At 04:26 AM 2/14/2002, Roger Fujii wrote:
This scheme would make the license awkward, because you have to add in "oh, by the way, all the contributions you make will be given to winecorp with an unrestricted license" clause. It is far cleaner and simpler to require contributions to assign the copyright. OpenOffice does this.
The danger of this approach is that EVERYONE -- even contributors -- must go to the organization that owns the copyright and ask, "Mother, may I?" before doing things with the code.
well, I think the assumption here was that winecorp would always release an lgped (or whatever viral license) version of the tree, so that 'normal' use would not be inhibited. I suppose there is a small window between submission/transfer of copyright and the publication into the tree where the maintainer/licensor may go insane and to something silly, but that scenario would definitely fall under "done in bad faith".
Commercial entities will have no guarantee that they'll be allowed to use even their own contributions -- especially if their competitors are part of the body that grants permissions. Politics can also rear their head, with favoritism toward specific vendors.
you do have a point - given that this licensing issue started up again because of what appears to be competitive/political reasons, I guess one shouldn't ignore the possible influence it might have in the future.
-r
At 12:10 PM 2/14/2002, Roger Fujii wrote:
well, I think the assumption here was that winecorp would always release an lgped (or whatever viral license) version of the tree, so that 'normal' use would not be inhibited.
The implication here is that the use of freely available code as the basis of commercial products is somehow not "normal." I'm not sure how you can say this, because it is really very common. Every modern operating system contains code from BSD, for example.
Commercial entities will have no guarantee that they'll be allowed to use even their own contributions -- especially if their competitors are part of the body that grants permissions. Politics can also rear their head, with favoritism toward specific vendors.
you do have a point - given that this licensing issue started up again because of what appears to be competitive/political reasons, I guess one shouldn't ignore the possible influence it might have in the future.
Politics always seem to get in the way in the world of freely distributable software. For example, the trademark "FreeBSD" is currently owned by one of the distributors of FreeBSD, not by the FreeBSD Foundation. It was supposed to transfer the trademark, but never has. In theory, this could allow it to shut down the other distributors unless they used a different name for the software. Linux also has its politics; witness the multi-way tug of war between ESR, Perens, and Stallman.
--Brett
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Brett Glass -
Roger Fujii