Slashdot Mirror
Intelligent Debate About WINE Licensing
Dr. Spork writes "If you want to read a discussion about OSS licenses that is not a flame war, check out this week's Wine Weekly News. Among the highlights are Gavriel State's arguments for keeping WINE on a BSD-style license. His company has been criticized for not releasing some very cool D3D code. He claims one reason is because 'there are companies out there who will benefit significantly from commercial use of this code, and who can afford to sponsor a portion of the development cost. Until such a sponsorship happens, we cannot apply the WineHQ license to that code.' GNU purists might think it's in bad taste to use the code as a hostage, but in a world where many rich companies rely on OSS, perhaps this signals the emergence of a new business model. You might call it 'code brokering,' and interestingly, you can't do it with the GPL."
> BSD code, on the other...
I don't really understand this attitude. If one puts his code under BSD license, then he is giving it away free.
It's like selling your house away for 100 dollars and then being later pissed off for 'being screwed' (assuming bargain was done legally and morally correct).
Okay, I can't tell clearly if you're arguing about two warring open source apps or about closed source taking from open. I will respond to each possiblity separately.
First, if Charlie is writing a closed source app, then (IHNSHO) they deserve not to sell their product. They cheated on the GPL in order to finish it (making it plain they can't do their own work); if they did sell well, I would expect to see Bob- as soon as he learned of this- go some lawers to put Charlie's company in a legal headlock. (Or at least try; just walking away is tacit approval.)
Secondly, if Charlie is writing an open sourced app (i.e. also under the GPL) then there are two flaws in your argument. Firstly Charlie's app could have also been included in major distros. How then is the field of competion imbalanced? Secondly I don't see open source applications being all that likely to sell massive numbers (unless what they sell is really technical service, like RedHat. That's a scheme I understand, PHBs can appreciate, and that will pull in revenue.) Futhermore, I cannot think of a single open sourced application that doesn't have a single competitor- everywhere I've looked there's duplication of effort. And none of these projects manage to kill the other. (Despite how much the proponents may want: *hint*hint* KDE/Gnome.)
I will state my opinion again, more clearly and in depth. When I write for an open source project, I want to ensure that knowledge is not used for another person's private profit. That is (IMO) unjust. Putting the same code in another open source app is just fine; that sort of sharing is implicit to the open source movement. The best license for that purpose, as far as I can tell, is the GPL. I will be glad to use apps written under other licences, but won't contribute to them.
Do you like Japanese imports?