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."

Comments

On many authors and ownership.

[mindstrm]

I think that one thing to look at is who holds the rights to GPL code?

Let's say, hypothetically, that I write a functional app, X, and relase it under the GPL. Regardless of the GPL, it's still MY project, and MY application.

Now, let's say you fix a bug in it and send me a patch... in an email like 'Hey.. I fixed such-and-such a bug, here's the code if you want to include it in your tree'.
See the problem? You aren't licensing your code to me under the GPL.. you just gave me a patch, freely, and told me I can 'have' it. So I put it in my software... and again, release an updated version under GPL.

Now compay Z comes along and wants to talk exclusive deal with me for my code, because they don't want to use GPL. I am still 100% free to negotiate with them; I don't have to share anything with you, or even include you in the discussion. It's still my project, and I am not bound by the terms of the GPL.
However.. had you released your patch to me as an updated, GPL version of the code instead of just sending me a patch and saying 'here you go', it would be a different story (or if you just released the patch clearly stating it was under GPL.)

This is something we often don't think about or look at in GPL.. we sort of assume that anyone who contributes anything becomes a co-author.. but that's not necessarily true at all.

Remember, there's more to it than just GPL...
GPL only says what rights you have to use someone elses code.. ownership of additions to your average OSS project is something that needs to be dealt with above and beyond that.

Case 4

[mindstrm]

Bob has a killer open source app, released under GPL, but it's not quite done.

Charlie's company is struggling for a simliar app, but is having trouble. Charlie discovere's Bob's project.

Charlie has his lawyers contact Bob to negotiate private licencing of the relevant code. Bob gets rich, Charlie's company prospers.

As for 'which is fairer'... I'm sorry, that totally depends on your personal wants and needs.
Those who willingly release under the BSD licence *KNOW* that a business can take their code and use it, proprietary, without them seeing a dime. I'm sure you won't find people who chose the BSD style license whining about 'not getting paid'

That's what I don't get about these stupid licencing arguments. It's all about what the copyright holder wants to do.. period.

GPL isn't free

[nodrip]

There are people out there who think -

- I want to release this code into the public domain to promote it as a standard, help other people etc.

There are people out there who think -

- I want to release this code into the semi-public domain in an effort to help people and force my political beliefs on them.

The first choose a "free software license", the second choose the GPL.

I choose free software and accept that companies can use it for commercial purposes. My point in releasing it was not to make money off of it or forward my political beliefs.

Which one are you? I'll give you a hint, Stallman is #2)

If whine want's to keep some code proprietary to protect their business while still promoting an open standard with a workable code base, that's just fine with me. If the standard grows in popularity you end up with an open standard backed up by a successful company. This works.
See www.opengl.org for a good example.

Moot point -- license be damned

[Deagol]

While I highly regard the wine crew and their accomplishments, I have to wonder... why bother?

I consider myself a hard-core Lilnux weenie. I don't balk at compiling and configuring software on Llinux. However, I've never had a satisfactory experience with wine in the last 8+ years.

My home and work machines both run Linux 100% of the time. For the 0.001% of things I just can't accomplish, I run an old copy of Win95 under VMWare. The only things I can't find OSS equivalents are TurboTax (too lazy to do by hand, too cheap to hire a CPA, and too complex to do over the web), and M$ Streets 2001.

No, I don't play games I can't find on Linux. I don't game much wanyway, so I don't suffer. I've taken to chess lately, so I get by with xboard/crafty. :)

I'd much rather see money/resources go into plex86 so I can ditch VMWare (which has far more cool uses than running Windows, anyway), than wine,