People,
I am sorry I have to fuel the flames, but I have to say what I have to say.
First, and formost, we have now heard the oppinion of two big (from Wine POV) commercial players: Gav and Jeremy. Now, it was painfully obvious to me that Jeremy had the power of reason on his side, while Gav only a strong emotional impulse. And there's reason for that -- the LGPL make a lot more sense for Wine.
We've heard countless arguments why that's not that case. A lot of them where simply nonsense. The few that made some sense, were ALL based on a false premise: that Wine is a monolithic product.
Now, this is a _fundamental_ point that is ignored over and over again: Wine is a _collection_ of products, just like a Linux distribution. Which means that the viral aspect of the LGPL _stops_ at every DLL boundary. It is easy to see now that this does not preclude most commercial implementations. In fact, it encourages them givin them a level playing field. Just like Linux does.
People, for crying out loud, _think_ about it, and the conclusion will jump right out at you. THIS IS WHAT WE WANT: -- if a company invests a _little_ to improve a DLL, we should have no moral problem requireing them to contribute that back. Since it's just a little contribution, no business will be destroyed because of it. -- if a company makes a huge improvement (like Transgaming), they can simply drop the original Wine code, and keep everything propriatary. Now, compared to the _huge_ improvement, the cost of reimplementing the mostly non-working Wine code should be trivial.
Bottom line is: -- are we raising the bar for comercial companies with a LGPL licence? YES! -- how _much_ are we raising it? BY A TRIVIALLY SMALL AMOUNT! -- do we invalidate TG business model? NO!
I'll say this: if Alexandre will start maintaining a LGPL tree, I will submit my code only as LGPL. Everybody who believes even _a_little_ in an LGPL solution should do the same.
-- Dimi.
At 10:41 AM 2/15/2002, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
Wine is a _collection_ of products, just like a Linux distribution. Which means that the viral aspect of the LGPL _stops_ at every DLL boundary.
Alas, it does not. First of all, there's the virulence that arises when a programmer of commercial software is "contaminated" by reading the existing code. The programmer cannot run the risk of reading the code or learning from it. Any improved DLL would have to be COMPLETELY reimplemented -- a highly wasteful and needless duplication of effort. Because this extra labor and expense will tax vendors' businesses, they will not have as many resources to contribute back to the project.
Nor will they be able to hire consultants such as Jeremy to help them with their products, because Jeremy will have seen the original source and thus cannot write commercially licensed DLLs for them. CodeWeavers will lose clients to consultants who have not seen the original code.
The contamination problem also means that any programmer of commercial products CANNOT debug the code and contribute fixes. He or she must treat it as if it were closed source. This hurts both the programmer and the project.
Finally, because the (L)GPL makes product differentiation at best and often infeasible or impossible, commercial software vendors that attempt to base products on it will not be viable or financially sound. Consultants such as Jeremy will find that they are often not paid due to business failures and will hence experience problems making their own payrolls. As a result, they, too, will not be able to contribute as much, hurting the project. Everyone loses.
In short, the (L)GPL will accomplish its stated goals: to put commercial software vendors out of business and to prevent programmers (including CodeWeavers!) from being adequately compensated for their work.
--Brett
On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Brett Glass wrote:
In short, the (L)GPL will accomplish its stated goals: to put commercial software vendors out of business and to prevent programmers (including CodeWeavers!) from being adequately compensated for their work.
Listen Brett,
I hate to break it to you, but you are barking up the wrong tree. Honestly, how many people do you think buy this type of argument? Can't you see that most Linux distributions _are_ made mostly of xGPLed code, and that hasn't stoped a lot of proprietary companies such as Oracle, SAP, IBM, etc. to release and develop code on this platform?
But really, my question is rethorical -- I expect no answer to that. Quite frankly, I consider arguments on this line of thinking delussional and paranoic, and to my mind they only add noise to the discussion. Let's drop them.
-- Dimi.
At 12:39 PM 2/15/2002, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
Can't you see that most Linux distributions _are_ made mostly of xGPLed code, and that hasn't stoped a lot of proprietary companies such as Oracle, SAP, IBM, etc. to release and develop code on this platform?
Targeting the platform (that is, releasing applications for it) does not seem to these companies to be dangerous, because none of them are in the OS business. (IBM does supply OSes such as AIX with hardware, but for the purpose of selling the hardware -- not to make money from the software. The one time they did try to make money with an OS -- OS/2 -- it was a disaster.) They see ports to Linux as a way of catching a ride on the Linux bandwagon.
But in truth, they ARE hurting themselves. By legitimizing and propagating the GPL, they are hastening the day when GPLed software invades their OWN product categories and destroys their businesses. Their "marketroids," alas, are focused on this month's sales figures and do not see the big picture. It requires long term strategic thinking to recognize the threat.
--Brett Glass
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Brett Glass -
Dimitrie O. Paun