Wine Continues To Move Towards License Change

uhmmmm writes "The Wine developer's votes are in. Wine will change license, as was suggested would happen, but it's not yet decided to what exactly. Alexandre notes 'We now have to decide the implementation details, like the exact license used, whether to require copyright assignments, etc.'"

Comments

The BSD license would seem to be best.

[Lord Hugh Toppingham]

The BSD license seems to be the best of all the 'open' licenses. This is because of all the freedoms it grants. It also lacks the 'viral' nature of the GPL which is also a much more restrictive license.

If WINE is to make inroads into the corporate sector, the BSD license is the way forward. The GPL has negative connotations due to RMS's somewhat anti-corporate stance and communistic leanings, neither of which play well to corporations or the general public in these days of the war against terrorism.

So, to sum up, the BSD license is the way forward.

Open Licenses

[opkool]

Hi there,

I'm in favour of a change in the Wine license that allows to :

- Keep the Seurce Code Open

- Let any software company to use it with their products in a way that WineHQ and the SoftwareCompany both beneffit from it.

Wine, everyday a little bit close to implement all of the Win32 function calls, is seen as a very good oportunity for software makers. But...

(Yes, I know, it's not the best thing. I love to see Linux native software only mysef. But if this new license allows a company to have a "Linux Version", IMHO this is a Good Thing for Linux.. Others have done it already: MusicMatch, Kylix 1.0 come to my mind.),

But, of course, the terms "GPL", and "Open Source" are a heavy obstacle (but untrue) for companies interested in making money in any platform. Specially when they associate GPL and OpenSource with and "Viral License".

Yes, there's Microsoft's FUD (remember Ballmer about "Linux as Cancer" and the likes?), lot of mis-information or simply plain lack of knowledge. And this can (is) prevent(ing) many companies to offer "Linux Versions" of their products. Quicken anyone? Children games? Stationary-making programs? software that comes with your hardware?.

So, with WINE offering a new license that allows a for-proffit company to sell Linux-products is good for Linux. With Wine offering a new license that is at the same time Open and usable by SoftwareMaker Inc. is a goog thing.

Hell, maybe they will even supply (paid) developers to the Wine project!

Those are my thoughts. What do you thing? Why I am right? why I am wrong? I am very interested in the Wine project. And I will read this discussion.

All the best.

Please post your speculation here

[msouth]

So, being the inquisitive type, I have to wonder what it was that Jeremy couldn't talk about that convinced him to raise this issue again after it had been "settled" before. Any ideas? Lindows? (--that's my speculation).

This is like Apple switching to preemptive multitasking instead of cooperative multitasking. Cooperative multitasking was fine as long as everyone played by the (unenforced except by community practice) rules. But, at some point some big player, or a horde or little players, is going to come along and not play be the (unenforced except by community practice) rules.

It looks like someone was making a bid to slurp up Codeweavers or something, eh? "Here's a lot of money, dude, give us your soul!" But a miniature RMS-resembling angel on the other ear said "GPL is the path to Free-dom!". And he swatted that one down, but then a more reasonable pixie sort of thing that looked halfway between a penguin and a demon says "Psst--use the Deprecated license, Luke". And that's what he put to the vote.

Do the scientists have the right idea?

[jACL]

Not trying to be a troll...hear me out.

I've been mulling over the GPL and BSD licenses for some time, trying to think of a way that businesses can make money while the community still benefits. (Isn't everybody?) So where does this come together?

Perhaps the scientists have the right idea. There's currently a strong leaning in the scientific community about the free release of journaled articles six months after publication. The journal gets to make money, but the research makes it into the public domain after a short time period.

Perhaps the approach that WINE can take would be for contributions to go GPL after a certain time period, say, six months or a year. A business can make money during that time, but as commercial systems become 'abandonware' after a period of time, the code can return to the community. Licensees could always choose to forego the time delay, publishing immediately.

What do others think? Is this a good balancing point? It just occurred to me that this is what ID has been doing with Doom and Quake.

Good....What about Transgaming and Codeweavers

[CDWert]

This is good, and I agree with the change, I think there has been a fair amount of bad feelings by developers when code has been wrapped in a proprietary product. Even though none of those poroprietary products have sealed their efforts, codeweavers does donate back to wine and transgaming is available via CVS.

I am curious about what will happen to the existing wine trees out there and in process of development. If I am correct they will not be allowed to borrow from the tree effective date being the liscence change, they will in fact, with the amount of work that goes into wine, end up with a stale tree quickly.

Is there a way around this ?

There is obviously no way to make the liscence apply retroactivly, and that would be wrong, is there any way to ensure certain portions of the new tree dont make it into a proprietary product bundle ?

Re:Good....What about Transgaming and Codeweavers

[Spoing]

Let's say Wine is LGPLed at midnight GMT tonight. As I understand it, anyone could take code from the pre-LGPL Wine and pick and choose what to grab out of the latest-and-greatest-LGPLed Wine.

From the POV of the licences, they could make massive changes to one or two files (from the pre-LGPL branch) and then import the remaining parts from the LGPL branch. At that point, they have violated no licences and are not required to release any source regaurdless of how the binary is distributed.

That way, the commercial project could take advantage of having mostly current code while keeping it all propriatory.

Will that last? I'd bet that over time this would start to get ugly and code management used to ensure that the licences weren't violated would be quite a chore. Without specifics, how much time is hard to predict.

Corrections appreciated.

Have you read the BSD license?

[QuantumG]

I'll include it for you below, the BSD license is just as viral as the GPL. In particular, the first condition clearly says that any code which is based on BSD licensed code has to be licensed under the BSD license. Sure, the GPL goes into detail which explicitly states the basis of copyright law but it is not that which makes the sentiment between the two licenses different. The difference is that the FSF uses the GPL and they will track you down if you change the license or distribute binaries without source (a restriction that the BSD license doesn't have) whereas someone who licenses their code under a BSD license wont bother (although they legally can). Check it out:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• 
  
• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  
• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  
• Neither the name of the organisation nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
  

+ the standard disclaimer of liability here. So if you want to talk about how restrictive both are some how restrictive, and both are "viral."

Oh no, it's much worse than that....

[Uruk]

Wine is actually a trojan horse of a strategic nature. Microsoft, along with the Illuminati, the Republican National Party, and the Yeti, funnel millions of dollars into the development of Wine behind the scenes. The idea is that people on other platforms should still be tied to applications on Windows. At a certain point, hapless GNU/Linux users will awake to the startling reality that even though they're running linux, they spend all of their time running Windows applications. They'll all eventually cave in and return to the warm bosom of Microsoft, never again to stray from the teat that provides them the poison they love so dearly.

It's all a conspiracy. I'm starting to think that ESR with his "open source" nonsense is actually also an operative for Microsoft, working deep, deep undercover to bastardize the "free software" philosophy by dumbing it down into "open source", all the while accepting licenses like the APSL, moving step by step, inch by inch, to fully proprietary licenses at which point he can join hands with Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Baalzebub rejoicing in their victory over the good things in the world.

Of course, all of this could be simply about the developers of Wine wanting to change to a copyleft license to prevent some bastard company from coming along, stealing everything, repackaging it with a 2KB patch, and closing the source.

Course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Should Wine follow Sleepycat's example?

[Deven]

The Wine project might be well served by imitating Sleepycat and their dual-licensing model for Berkeley DB.

Berkeley DB started as a small embedded database library which only supported hash tables and btrees. Since it was written for BSD Unix as a replacement, it was released under the BSD license. After a few years, it was widely used, but it still only offered access methods. When Netscape wanted more features, such as transactions, disaster recovery and multiple-user support, Sleepycat Software was founded to further develop Berkeley DB (on the strength of a licensing deal with Netscape).

The new version of the software was released under the Sleepycat license, an OSI-approved license which allows Open Source applications to use Berkeley DB, but (unlike the GPL) appears to be compatible with any Open Source license. For proprietary applications, Sleepycat offers a more traditional licensing option to companies who don't wish to distribute their source code. Revenue from such licensing funds additional development of Berkeley DB, to the benefit of all. (For example, Berkeley DB 4.x adds replication and high-availability functionality that surely would not exist without the funding received through this dual licensing.)

Perhaps the Wine project should follow this example? Wine could be placed under a license like Sleepycat's, which would allow Wine to be freely used by Open Source projects (whether GPL or not), and proprietary companies could pay for a license which allows proprietary use. Funding from such licensing could be used to further develop Wine, to the benefit of proprietary and Open Source users alike.

BSD or LGPL licensing allows proprietary companies to profit from the hard work of the Open Source developers without giving anything back. Sleepycat's licensing model forces them to give something back, either by contributing more Open Source code back to the community, or by paying cash for the privilege of avoiding that -- which could then be used to fund development that would benefit the Open Source community.

It's a win-win situation, and it would ensure that contributors don't get exploited. It could also lead to funding that might greatly accelerate the development of Wine, even more than relying on companies like Corel to contribute back changes they've made to the codebase.

I'm not a contributor to Wine, but I'd suggest they consider following Sleepycat's example -- it appears to work well for them, why not for Wine?

Half full?

[ahde]

While I'm not thrilled about the sudden fad of projects abandoning the GPL, there is one potential positive thing that can come of it. It shows corporation that may be thinking of developing for linux that they can start with the GPL and fairly easily switch to a proprietary (or BSD style) license with relative ease -- especially compared to going the other way around. In both instances, you would need to track down contributions from independent copyright holders, but in the case GPL software, it would be easier to re-implement (or link to) than proprietary modules.

This may help companies that would like to grow a user base with a GPL product and then pull a bait and switch on their users and close it up and start charging. Or charge for "add ons". From the companies perspective, it shows that while the GPL may be viral, the disease is not terminal (sorry for pun). One downside they may perceive are that users will continue to use the earlier GPL versions, but everyone loves new features.

While this sounds like encouraging bad ideas and proprietary trojan horses into a free software, I'm confident that the majority will eventually see the benefit of open source and be reluctant to branch. If not the majority, then survival of the fittest. We don't really *need* seven office suites (5 plus vi, emacs, and latex is plenty.1) anyway. Sure, there'll be times (when the stock price takes a dip, or a new accountant is hired) when companies make mistakes and experiment with creative new money making schemes, but eventually, it will become obvious that the expense of proprietary software development outweighs its benefits.