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WINE May Change To LGPL
isolation wrote to us about the proposal to change the Wine license to LGPL. Jeremey's got his ideas and reasons in the e-mail there, and it makes sense - Jeremy's a smart guy. There's a call for opinions on this as well, so read through it, and offer commentary.
Im a bit curious, does anyone know what that "other propiatory" stuff he is talking about, but cannot reveal any further, is ? It sounds to me that we could be talking Lindows, but I dont know that much about Lindows to know how it "emulates/wraps" Win32 API.
Any other ideas ?
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Not really.
W2K and WinXP are already as stable -- if not more stable -- than the current 2.4.x kernel series.
The owls are not what they seem
If they chose the LGPL, there still would be the
issue whether to choose v2.0 or v2.1
The latter is called "Lesser" instead of "Library"
and calls itself deprecated due to RMS objections
on non-GPL software.
Yes, read non-GPL, not non-open, not even non-free.
RMS wrote the GPL to exactly achieve the aim that
all software has to be free as in GPL, and so he
invented (or copied?) the viral/tainting thing.
/me votes for MIT or LGPLv2.0
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
What will this do to Transgaming? They will no longer be able to make changes and keep them to themselves - kind of seems like it destroys their business model.
I guess the only thing they could do is to for Wine themselves and never touch Codweavers code again - but that means that they now have to deal with a completely larger set of problems than they currently are.
Personally I think this is bad for Wine - Transgaming has already given so much back to the Wine project it is not even funny (including the fact that Transgaming is now looking to sponsor some portions of Wine progress) - but this switch is going to create some animosity between the two.
Maybe they should have a dual license - kind of like mysql, where it is GPL, but some companies can license the code and they don't have to contribute back.
It is a tough situation - but let's hope that forward progress does not get stopped because of it!
Derek
If someone wants to build the latest WineX, they have to wait for Transgaming to release a binary; no CVS. People have asked for the Macrovision module to be broken out, but Transgaming have not been able to (yet?).
For those who haven't followed this, the complaint TG gives was that the copy restriction code needs to be patched in to various parts of WineX to get it to work. While I see this as a problem, it can't be a really big one.
The sticky issue is that providing a binary copy restriction module might cause problems with Macrovision Inc. -- the folks who provided this code (likely under a quite threatening NDA).
Can Transgaming make a seperate module...and will Macrovision like Transgaming's ideas well enough to allow it to be released? My bet is that Macrovision really don't want that part seperated from WineX. Right now, it's mixed in with a bunch of other code and is harder to understand. As a stand-alone module with hooks it would have a much higher chance that it could be easily thwarted on both Linux+Wine and Windows systems.
Personally, I *hate*, *lothe*, and *dispise* this type of thing. I have a few commercial non-game CDs that are useless largely because Macrovision's "Safedisc". Transgaming's version works...but only on a few CDs. Mostly, it doesn't. History keeps repeating...
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
No actually not, I wrote code, quite a bit actually, on a project with a VERY similar liscence, I thought this a good thing at the time. BUT when that was wrapped and sold, ok well no big deal. BUT then 2 things happened, when the commercial package started to fail, and even before, people came to ME for suport finding I was the author. It was a port of a *nix only app at the time when the main branch was adding Win32 support, AND the commercial entity actually asked me to fix what I had writen !
The code I wrote, in the whole of the project was in EARLY beta when the took the tree and decided to commercialize it. You cannot imagine the headaches I endured. Im talking 20+ emails a day for over a YEAR ! Some downright nasty,
The code segments in question were even commented, "This is a cludge, at best for now, Things cannot be done the old way under Win32 and until a better understanding of the Win32 API calls in question can be resolved this will suffice for testing only" Now when MS relesed SP3 EVERTHING Broke.....Should I be RESPONSIBLE to support this shit ? To an entity that is making money off it ? AND then have them ACT LIKE IM OBLIGED TO ?
Not elitist, realist, I closed down that email acct shortly after.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
for the record -
I've had winXP crash so many times it's not funny. Yes, i've seen the BSOD - it doesn't even offer recovery. and i've seen it more than once. how long have i been running XP? a week. All signed drivers, all stable hardware. Still - crashes...i think I just abuse it too much with the programs I run. It isn't as stable as i've found 2K to be. but 3 BSODs in a week, and having to deal with it's 'pretty' colors doesn't make a happy user. me.
on the other hand, i've abused linux mandrake pretty well - and on the same box - so you can't claim hardware is all that's crashing XP. Sure - i can crash processes in linux - but it's pretty hard to take down the kernel. Just my 2c.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
I just think this contribution to the Wine lists is especially interesting, and deserves to be quoted here:
On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, Dan Kegel wrote:
> It's about time. Putting Wine under the xGPL is the best way
> I can think of to ensure its future. The xGPL makes it possible
> for competitors to cooperate for their common good - which is pretty amazing.
This is a fundamental point which we haven't had a chance of discussing
last time as we argued over silly future (unlikely) possible changes in
copyright law.
One important argument was that building a thriving economic environment
around Wine is essential for its success.
Everybody agreed on this premise, IIRC.
The argument followed that BSD license is better for creating such an
environment, and hence better for Wine, since more business will
contribute more code back.
This, I'm afraid, is entirely false.
I argue that in fact, the BSD license is a STRONG DETERANT for businesses
to contribute code back, while the LGPL provides an INCENTIVE.
Note that I do not care, for the purpose of this discussion, about
businesses which don't intend to contribute code back. They are of no help
to Wine, and thus irrelevant (if not a little harmful, for reasons so
eloquently explained by Alexandre).
A BSD license is a STRONG DETERANT for a business to contribute code
back. The reason for this is that they have no guarantee that another
business will not improve a little the code, and thus get a competitive
advantage. Or that other companies will not use that code on top of the
code they wrote but not released, and thus again, get that edge. This is a
fantastic _deterant_ for releasing code back. In fact, Gav validated
exactly this point when he tried to argue for the BSD license last time:
But 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.
In other words, they needed that code. They invested some money do get
it. They are happy with the results. Why not release the code? They have
what they needed in the first place? The reason is clear -- it cost them
to get there, they can not aford to bring everybody there for free. I can
100% understand that. But if the code was under the LGPL, it would not
matter, because even if they brought everybody there, other companies
could not step ahead of them, since if they did, they themselves could
have used that code.
In other words, TG could have kept Direct3D proprietary, released
everything else back under LGPL, and they could have _known_ they still
have the competitive edge in the D3D work! This is why the LGPL is in fact
an _incentive_ for such colaboration.
Bottom line is clear: as the project matures and becomes more useful, the
deterant of contributing code back from a business perspective is going to
greatly increase, while at the same time, the incentive under the LGPL
would have also increased.
In economic terms, for Wine, one spells death, the other, life.
--
Dimi.
Mr. Stallman, so the story goes, got annoyed that he couldn't fix a bug in a printer driver, and so developed the philosophy that, essentially, users of software developed under this philosophy could always get at the source to make the modification themselves, and then send them out to benefit users as a whole.
It's important to know the truth about this story, which Stallman and the FSF have recently begun to propagate to cover up the true origins of the GPL.
The truth is that Stallman sought revenge when colleagues working at the MIT AI Lab left the organization to turn the discoveries they'd made in their research into products. Stallman was bitter because he felt that the academic "Nirvana" he found at the Lab was disintegrating, and pursued his former co-workers in the same way that an estranged spouse might stalk his or her "ex." (For the full story, see Steven Levy's excellent book "Hackers.")
The GPL arose from Stallman's desire to sabotage his colleagues prospects for success -- as well as those of all other commercial developers, whom he branded as "evil" (his own word).
The LGPL, by the way, was originally called the "Library GPL" and was recommended by the FSF for libraries. Then, one day, the name was changed to the "Lesser GPL." Overnight, in Orwellian fashion, all references to the original name were expunged from the FSF's Web site as if the original name had never existed.
Why? Because Stallman had abruptly decided that the terms of the LGPL were not hostile enough to commercial software developers. Shortly thereafter, a new version of the license came out which was significantly more restrictive than the original.
The GPL and the LGPL implement an intentionally business-hostile and programmer-hostile agenda, and are not "free" in any sense of the word. They also do not qualify as "Open Source" licenses, as they discriminate against a group of people (commercial software developers) and against a field of endeavor (the production of commercial software).
So why do people still choose the GPL over BSD license?
evanchik.net
I thought their open debate was interesting enough that I submitted it here on Slashdot. However, the issue is now dead. They are NOT changing to the LGPL. Please leave the WINE coders alone and let them write code. They deserve credit for having a very civil and constructive debate about licensing issues, in a climate where flamewars are the rule when the issue gets brought up. WINE coders are not only excellent programmers, but they are also wise for having settled the issue. This "Jeremy" may be a smart guy, but his position lost out. Him trying to stoke up the issue and cause dissention in the improbably civil WINE community does not seem very smart to me. Last year was the time to discuss this. Now is the time to shut up and code.
So why do people still choose the GPL over BSD license?
Most don't choose; the project chooses the license for them.
Others do not know that there's more than one license for open source.
Still others are deceived by the propaganda that accompanies the GPL. They see the claim that the GPL makes software "free" at the top (even though it is a bald-faced lie) and never read the pages of legalese that follow.
Still others believe that by embracing the GPL they are attacking large corporations such as Microsoft. In fact, those corporations have the ability to hire programmers to implement equivalents of anything they choose. It's small companies that want to compete with big guys like Microsoft that are most badly hurt by the GPL, because the GPL denies them access to code and they're forced to reimplement. (It's ironic that the GPL is so beneficial to Microsoft, but it is. It kills Microsoft's potential competition in the cradle.)
In NO case is the GPL actually a good choice. It is an onerous and unconscionable license that will hopefully be ruled illegal sometime in the near future.