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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.'"
How will changing to the LGPL help wine? How will it help the industry? Isn't the idea that someone might "make it proprietory" exactly what the wine project set out to acheive? Wouldn't it be great if a large number of companies were to figure out what wine is and how they can use it and finally put up some competition for Microsoft?
How we know is more important than what we know.
The BSD license is nothing more than a corporate license to steal other peoples work and make money off it. As examples I give you Microsoft and Apple. What are your examples?
I've decided to mispell one or more words in all my correspondence. If you don't like it then don't read it.
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.
You _think_ it's the best. I disagree. The pro-corporate BSD license allows closing of the source, which means less rights for the user. The GPL doesn't have that problem.
BSD is not the licence to obsolete all others. the future is dual licencing, IMO.
//rdj (you don't think I'd claim that extra mod-point, do you?)
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
A nice side effect of the "BSD License" is multiple targets for Microsoft as there's more commercial exploitation of WINE, and thus more dissipation of the energies of Microsoft, especially as they draw more fire for trying to suppress their competition, thus a better chance for more open-source projects to thrive in spite of annoying the Evil Empire at Redmond.
Nearly anything that increases commercial participation in Linux is good, especially if it directly attacks the Windows semi-monopoly. Seems good! :)
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
In the case of Windows software, they just click 'I Agree' and in the case of Linux software, they actually have to be aware that there is a LICENSE.TXT file and go and read it.
Then it's still through their actions or inactions that their code is now GPLed. Again, there is nothing viral about the GPL.
Dinivin
The BSD license is nothing more than a corporate license to steal other peoples work and make money off it.
Alright... That's just as bad as the "viral nature of the GPL" crap.
How can someone possibly steal something that's being freely given away?
Dinivin
This message brought to you by your good friends at Microsoft. Where do you want us to let you go today?
This message brought to you by the Enron^H^H^H^H^H Republican Party.
All kidding aside...
The GPL offers more freedom to the community.
The BSD license offers more freedom to the individual.
They are both good licenses.
They each have their place.
What would be bad is if developers like those working on Wine had no right to choose between them. This is where most folks differ in opinion from RMS. It seems RMS would rather there be no software license other than the GPL.
-1 Offtopic
That said, I am not sure the BSD license would be wise for them. I would think it best to go with something more akin to the LGPL or something that would make it less likely that their efforts were incorporated into a commercial product for which they received no remuneration.
+1 Insightful
Here's hoping the moderators are on my side today.
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.
Liberty uber alles.
Not to mention it was specifically stated that they didn't want to use the BSD style license as they felt it was hurting the project. Wow. What a concept. People believe that the BSD license may be hurting their efforts. Last I read, they wanted to use a license which prevented these entities from taking the WINE project and not contributing back to it. Doesn't sounds like they want to be very BSD to me. In fact, sounds like the BSD concept is the root of the desired license change.
Get over it. A license is a license. Just because you may or may not have a personal opinion on a license one way or another doesn't mean the rest of the world will share your opinion. In fact, it seems the Wine team feels poorly about using a BSD style license. Go figure.
Lastly, GPL does not have negative connotations unless you've been feeding at the Microsoft camp lately. The concept behind GPL code is simple. Either you get it or you don't. Either you want to contribute back or you don't. There is nothing negative about it other than they simply don't want you stealing other people's efforts unless you're going to return your efforts for the good of all. So basically you are saying that companies don't like GPL code because they can't legally steal it? Sounds like an ethics check is in order.
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.
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
You consider the ability to take without giving back to be a freedom. I don't. The whole argument boils down to that. If you don't mind someone taking what you have created and selling it back to you, use the BSD license. If you don't want that to happen, use the GPL.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Actaully, the BSD license is nothing more than a university license to assure university research is free to use for *all* (including corporations) to use as they see fit. Where would the web be today if Mosaic was not licensed under a BSD-style license? Since a BSD-style license can require credit to be given to the original project, how about a "for original source see www.winehq.com"- style message. Not that I think it's better than LGPL. It's just not worse either.
Alexandre posted the results of his survey to the Winedev newsgroup this morning (in my timezone).
Of people who expressed an opinion and who had contributed code, the results were roughly 2 to 1 in favor of moving to the LGPL.
Of people who expressed an opinion and who had NOT contributed code, the numbers were more favorable to remaining with the X11 style license.
<opinion source="me">
People who code prefer LGPL, people who bitch don't.
</opinion>
www.eFax.com are spammers
Fortunately the GPL has never been upheld in a court of law, and never will be. How on earth can unzipping a tarfile possibly commit me to a legal contract ? Answer - It cannot.
It doesn't have to. If you don't accept the license, you don't have any rights to do anything at all with that tarfile - you are breaking copyright law the moment you even attempt to redistribute any of it.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
I did read the article. My point was they want to stop people using the library for the very things people actually want to use it for. If the majority of the developers want that, then it's fine, but it won't help the popularity of the code if lots less people use it. The developers seem somewhat confused over _why_ they wrote the code in the first place. It's like saying "use wine, it's better than windows. But don't think of selling your improvements for money." Fine. But that will just make people use real windows instead. It's not like someone profiting from improvements to wine harms its development in any way. And I hardly thing the word "bigot" is appropriate. As one of the original developers of wine I think that I have every right to state what I think of the license conditions. My contribution was very small and a long time ago, and has pretty much all long since been replaced by better code, so I'm not voicing an official opinion over what should happen to the code. It should be up to the active developers. But I find it amusing that people who probably had nothing at all to do with the development of the code feel fit to hurl abuse at those people who did for daring to have an opinion over who should be allowed to use that code, and under what conditions.
Sig is taking a break!
Um, licensing issues should really be dealt with long before any code is written. Otherwise you could have the situation where the guy who wrote 15,000 lines of code for a project refuses to go along with the new license.
Liberty in your lifetime
Here is a dissenting voice from the discussion which is probably going to be a better argument for the current (BSD-style) license than anyone here will come up with off hand:
/ 02 /0125.html
http://www.winehq.com/hypermail/wine-devel/2002
This is from a person who has made money developing wine-related stuff but thinks he won't be able to under the xGPL scheme. You have to (well, you should) ask whether shutting out this kind of development is good for the project.
Liberty uber alles.
Like an asthmastic ant... with heavy shopping.
Yet, the current code is good. It's quite good. Yesterday, I fired up a demo version of Lightwave 7.0 under it. Most of the application worked flawlessly including interactive modeling, camera position, and on-screen rendering. Though I didn't test everything, the main problem I found was that the file dialog had a focus problem and would flicker. I can't see that still being a problem when an official 1.0 release of Wine is released.
With the current licence, and the recient improvements to Wine, it is becoming a tempting target to hijack. With comparitively minimal funds, about 10 years of work could be rolled into a commercial product that never gives a line of code back.
The LGPL or similar licences would allow largely unhindered commercial production with a much greater chance that many changes would be folded back into the core Wine tree. A licence like this would not prevent a company or individual from making supplementary and seperate libraries that are closed, but it would encourage some more general code to be returned. That's at a minimum.
The best case would be that larger changes are rolled back into CVS, and good feedback like the kind that came from Codeweavers, Corel, Transgaming, and Lindows (benifit of a doubt).
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
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 ?
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
http://www.winehq.com/hypermail/wine-devel/2002/02 /0129.html
This is from a person who has made money developing wine-related stuff but thinks he won't be able to under the xGPL scheme. You have to (well, you should) ask whether shutting out this kind of development is good for the project.
Liberty uber alles.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
+ the standard disclaimer of liability here. So if you want to talk about how restrictive both are some how restrictive, and both are "viral."
How we know is more important than what we know.
You may want to go back and read the article. The article is a vote on whether or not to switch to a copyleft style license. This means that they would be switching from a permissive free software license (like BSD/X11) to a copyleft license (GPL/LGPL)
In other words, Wine is going against the trend you are accusing them of.
So basically, I found your post relatively informative except for the fact that all of the content in it was 180 degrees from the situation that is unfolding currently in reality.
Won't you join us? (In reality, that is)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
mandates freedom and requires you to contribute to the common good
Is this ironic or what? That sums up my opposition to the GPL right there.
Much better if you remove all obstacles to freedom and contribution to the public good, than forcing people to do so. I don't see any difference between your statement and totalitarianism. Sure the verbiage is slightly different, but the aim is the same - to make everyone fit into YOUR view of how the world should work and not to reach a common consensus. That's the part I hate - being told by some self-righteous bastard that I have to do this or I am not a "good person".
blinded by the almighty (American) dollar
Feel free to give up your day job if you don't want to depend on the dollar anymore. But until the Star Trek economy starts making better headway, we're stuck with it. You may not like the game - but most of us have to play it in one form or another.
Linux is now on the verge of making really big money
And I suppose if you have your way, this won't happen either because it will lead to more dollar-blindness.
Just so you know - I am in favor of a better world - but we can't get there overnight and we definitely can't get there by immediately destroying the institutions that have brought us this far. While the technological rate of change is pretty damn fast, people need time to adapt and wrap their minds around concepts. It might be nice if we could all wake up and start getting along, but we're talking about a process that's going to take several hundred generations and you're pissed because we're on step one.
We'll never see this world you dream of, nor will your children. But if you're lucky your greatX5-grandchildren might.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
You consider the ability to take without giving back to be a freedom. I don't.
It is called sharing. More people should learn about it.
The whole argument boils down to that. If you don't mind someone taking what you have created and selling it back to you, use the BSD license. If you don't want that to happen, use the GPL.
Or it could be phrased: if you like to openly share (no strings attached) use the BSD license and if you don't, use the GPL.
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.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
The pro-corporate BSD license allows closing of the source, which means less rights for the user.
Hogwash! The rights never changed. Even with Lindows existance, the license within WINE's distribution did not magically change, therefore, what I am allowed to do with the code did not change.
Don't know why it's not 'Score:2' to begin with.
This is what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they allowed patents and copyrights in there in the first place.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The GPL offers more freedom to the community.
The BSD license offers more freedom to the individual.
Personally, I see the BSD license as having a larger set of entities which can use the code than the GPL.
I sort of have the opinion that before anyone takes on m$ft and bets the farm on their OS they might want just a little bit of security in their investment, namely that they can keep competitors from cloning their product, something the LGPL is not good for as anyone who has bought a copy of their m$ft compatible OS can demand the source code. You have to walk before you can run. Wine should keep their code free (truely free) until there are proprietory forks and then they should convince me (the consumer, who copyright actually exists to benefit) that the open source version is better.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I would have to agree. Gentleman like Mr. Gates, Mr. Glass, and other license 'viewholders' share the common belief of corporations not being able to use GPL'ed code. They would lead us to believe a company is going to be ever-profitable and ever-wonderful, but an evil engineer slips in 'print "Hello World!\n" and all of a sudden, Capitolism, Bambi's mom, and eveything nice dies.
I can't see why people get so offended by the GPL. There is no example of an individual ever having been forced to use the GPL in a project. Somehow I still have the freedom to either a.) not use the code, b.) write my own code (perish the thought), or c.) find other code.
The LGPL is a very generous comprimise. You get protected code that you can link against, allowing you to keep your project as seperate as you wish.
Wasn't this the Wine development team's decision? Isn't that all that matters?
Not to mention it was specifically stated that they didn't want to use the BSD style license as they felt it was hurting the project.
:)
Actually, it was not the project which proposed the license change; it was a company (CodeWeavers).
There is nothing negative about it other than they simply don't want you stealing other people's efforts unless you're going to return your efforts for the good of all.
The BSD license is about sharing. If I share my food with someone, I don't expect it back. That would be a loan.
P.S. I would never want that food back.
Well, it depends on your perspective. I'm sure many MAC users would like to run some windows app on OSX.
Do you think with the LGPL a company would work on PowerPC emulation within Wine? It could fill a potential need, that the 'Wine community' isn't working on, but they can't sell their product when it's available for free, so why invest in it? I don't think that helps the community.
From the POV of most of the WINE developers, that's just fine. The users can suffer until someone with their train of thought joins the cliq. Yes, I've been following the thread. The developers are mostly all "Me, me, me"... Which is just fine if nobody actually is looking to use your product..
It's like cutting your nose off to spite your face.
Then again, something else never mentioned is the probability that a patch from a company gets accepted into the tree in a reasonable amount of time. I could hack something up to make it work, and the xGPL basically requires that I share that work. What if my changes are never accepted? That LGPL code is now essentially BSD (not the license doens't change, but my add-on work may not beavailable), because a company could write such bad looking code, or code that doesn't fit the 'template', that it's never accepted. Yet, they've complied with the LGPL because they're returned their work to the community
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I never said it was off topic, I said he was completely *WRONG*. It's like saying 2+2=5 should be modded interesting as a different mathematical approach. No, 2+2=5 is not interesting it's wrong; it would be interesting if it weren't completely wrong.
Again, for the reading impaired i.e. YOU
Poster states that wine is moving from GPL to BSD license
Article states that wine is moving from BSD style to LGPL
What more is there to state, he completely incorrectly stated the entire article. How much more wrong can you get? Do I need to send you a mp3 with me saying how wrong it is before you understand that there is offtopic, and then there is completely, totaly, absolutely, factually wrong.
I'm with you on the 'not stealing' part.
I disagree on the GPL equals no money part.
There's nothing in the GPL or LGPL the prevents selling software. There's nothing in either licence that prevents distribution with commercial or even BSD parts. One example: Caldera -- they sell a per-seat licence for thier Linux disto..
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
GPL:
"5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it."
You're not required to accept the licence, but then you are not granted any *rights* either. So if you redistribute or create a derivate, or anything else requiring permission from the copyright holder, you need a licence.
It's a perfectly valid defense that you've not accepted the license, as there is no proof of that in one direction or the other. However if that's your defense you also incriminate yourself as guilty under Title 17, Ch. 5, Sec. 506(a)(1) for infringing copyright for commercial gain, a crime punishable by 5 years in prison + fines. (IANAL btw) The GPL is in fact probably more enforcable than the click-through licence, as the click-trough is presented to you after the purchase.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Take a look at TuxRacer, as an example; started out GPL, main programmer got a few submissions, main programmer decided to re-release it as a closed source game, replaced the submitted changes with his own and relicenced the result. This is entirely valid under the GPL.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
It is not EULA, the end-user doesn't have to accept the license to be able to use the software. But when you want to redistribute the software, you have to accept the license, because you have nothing else which would allow you to redistribute it (you may have heard about the copyright law).
You are probably not the only one who doesn't know that, so let me quote the GPL, Section 3, emphasis is mine:
People will take you much more seriously, when you know what are you talking about. Really, you'll be nicely surprised. When you want to criticize the GPL, read the GPL first. I hate to say obvious things, but it seems to be the only way for many people to understand the most fundamental rules of any kind of discussion. If any license has no legal meaning (which is not true with GPL, otherwise Microsoft wouldn't spread FUD and therefore you wouldn't be so biased now), the license doesn't change magically into original or modified BSD license (I don't know which one you refer to). When authors publish their work without explicit license (or with illegal license), there are implicit restrictions set by the copyright law, which I strongly urge you to read about.~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
From reading the archive, I think Jeremy White was making another point. The problem is not so much that TransGaming is not sharing code. The problem is that everybody knows that they are doing a lot of heavy lifting to make games work. JW says that prior to TransGaming entering the field, the bulk of contributions to WINE were game related. Since no one wants to duplicate TransGaming's work, non TransGaming DirectX contributions have dropped off to almost nothing. He also mentioned that one developer spent three weeks duplicating some InstallShield functionality that CodeWeavers developed. Basically, proprietary companies are being seen by developers at large as "owning" particular segments of Wine development. In short, JW is worried about an ongoing brain-drain.
There is another problem. He says that he and other core developers are often hired to implement spot bits of functionality that allow particular applications to be ported to *nix. The current licence encourages the clients to want to own the for hire work even though it is the end result (the application can be sold on *nix.) that is important and not a few snippets of code to WINE. If WINE were LGPLed, WINE developers would still be hired to assist with application porting but they wouldn't waste their time on work that doesn't advance the overall effort. This bears some explicit pointing out for would be trolls. The LGPL means that the ported applications remain the property of the clients yet would allow the changes to WINE to go back into the main tree. JW wants a clear set of rules so clients know before the fact what belongs to the project and what belongs to them.
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?
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
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.
Sheesh. Because we do not want to have to pay out the ass to M$ to run a few games or a couple apps that are simply not available in linux (yet). This situation DOES occur, you know.
I am morally opposed to giving a single penny of my money to M$ (when/if they are cut down to size, reigned in, I will reconsider) but I DO play games and they are ALL M$ games. I also must, on occasion, use a piece of software (fortunately, none of it M$) that needs windoze. Given the above, I am left with Wine, which does a pretty frickin' good job. There is nothing wrong with this.
YOU don't have to like or use wine but it is your tough sh*t if (many) others disagree with your attitude.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Bullcrap. If you don't like the frickin' license, go elsewhere or create you OWN code (yeah, right).
MOST people don't like the M$ "license" when they actually read it (fortunately, it doesn't have any teeth being an invalid click-thru fascist license).
You are free to NOT use code that has a license you disagree with. That is all the freedom YOU need.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
That would be cool, considering that M$ isn't even 99.0 % compatible with itself.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
It is called sharing. More people should learn about it.
Both licenses are about sharing. One just makes sure that the sharing continues.
Or it could be phrased: if you like to openly share (no strings attached) use the BSD license and if you don't, use the GPL.
Or: If you want your code to stay open, use GPL. If you want someone else to make money off of something that you didn't ask any money to produce, use BSD.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
I'm lery of "dual licenses" because it seems to voilate one important part of Open Software(let alone Free Software as the Gnu philosophy defines it).
Open Software should be available for ***everyone*** to use. Single users to multiple users. Non-profit to big profit. None of that should matter if you really want "open" software. Restricting it to be open for some (non profits and profits that pay) but not others has all sorts of dubious problems.
I do recognize that some groups do need to make money but I think that APIs/library usage are the wrong places to do it for Open Software.
I was responding to the OP use of "mandates personal freedom and requires you to contribute to the public good." You see, while you may hate having commercial software rammed down your throat, I hate having someone tell me I have to do something to benefit someone else. I'll contribute to the public good if and when I see fit, and I absolutely will not support some loudmouthed moralist who has decided that what I write must go to some nebulous "good" purpose.
That is the problem with the FSF and the Open Source movement as I see it now. While it claims to be about choice, the only choice that the most obnoxious proponents (like the OP) offer is no choice at all. There is no middle ground with these jerks.
So I don't give them one. And if you read my post - I never mentioned Communism once.
By the way, an opinion is exactly that - it requires no facts to back it up, just the conviction to speak what's on your mind. That includes "talking out your ass". At least I have the courage to sign my posts.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
I didn't mean it like that. I was trying to say that BSD can be used in a larger number of ways than the GPL without being in violation of the license.
The only reason an entity would not use code licensed under the GPL is if they are intent on profiting from the work of others without giving anything back.
Incorrect. There are many reasons someone would not use GPL code. For example, if I wanted to use a portion of code in a BSD-licensed project, I would stick with BSD'd code. I think MESA switched from the LGPL to the X11 license to be included in XFree86.
But you do have choice. You have the choice of not contributing (or using) the code at all. There is nothing being rammed down your throat. You are not mandated to do anything. You are merely required to abide by the license if you redistribute the code. Don't like it? Fine. Nobody will put a gun to your head -- just don't redistribute modified code.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
I don't see how this differs practically from offering it under the LGPL while offering commercial terms as an alternative. Both provide a free version licensed under "viral terms", and both would require copyright assignation from all contributors.
The LGPL would allow proprietary vendors to exploit the Wine developers by linking a proprietary product to Winelib, distributing it for profit, and not giving anything back to the community. The only area where this isn't the case is when that product requires the core Wine code to be patched to work -- those patches would have to be contributed back under the LGPL. However, the better and better Wine gets, the less proprietary vendors will need to give back and the more effectively they'll be able to exploit the hard work of the Wine contributors...
The full GPL would be more effective, since it would apply to the entire application, and give vendors an incentive to pay for an alternative.
As for "choosing which viral license", the GPL is one of the few copyleft licenses which demands that other code use the exact same license -- many other Open Source licenses demand characteristics of the other license(s) such as source code availability (like Sleepycat does), which allows you to mix-and-match licenses to a certain degree.
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
I'm leery of "dual licenses" because it seems to voilate one important part of Open Software(let alone Free Software as the Gnu philosophy defines it).
It's not as idealistic as Free Software. It's more realistic. Let's face it, companies exist to make money, and if they can exploit the hard work of volunteers to make an easy profit, they will. Most companies won't contribute back out of "social conscience" like individuals might -- if they did, they could even get sued by stockholders for breach of fiduciary duty for not seeking the maximum profit possible.
The companies that do contribute back to the community do it to the degree they feel it will be advantageous (to the company and its stockholders) in terms of saved development costs (avoiding the need to maintain a forked tree) and/or public relations/marketing benefits of appearing to be a "good corporate citizen". If a contribution back to the community would sacrifice a significant competitive advantage, it probably won't be contributed back unless it's forced (by the GPL, for example).
Open Software should be available for ***everyone*** to use. Single users to multiple users. Non-profit to big profit. None of that should matter if you really want "open" software. Restricting it to be open for some (non profits and profits that pay) but not others has all sorts of dubious problems.
The GPL isn't really open in that way. The GPL demands that you "play nice" if you want to use GPL'd code -- by releasing your code under the GPL as well. For many proprietary vendors, this is a completely unacceptable demand, so they avoid GPL code like the plague. The "dual licensing" model offers an alternative -- if you won't "play nice" by opening up your own code, you can pay for the privilege of using the code anyway -- and that money will be used to fund improvements in the software for everyone.
This is a win-win situation. Those who are willing to release their code can freely use it, and get the benefit of development which likely wouldn't have occurred without funding. Those who aren't willing to "play nice" must pay, but they also benefit from that development work in the long term, and they still save money over redeveloping the same functionality.
The GPL's approach to proprietary software is "I'm going to take my ball and go home." This dual-licensing approach is "if you don't want to play nice, then pay me to make it worth my while." This is pragmatic rather than petulant.
I do recognize that some groups do need to make money but I think that APIs/library usage are the wrong places to do it for Open Software.
On the contrary! This is the best place to do it because there is leverage in this area. If you make a good library (like Berkeley DB), proprietary vendors will be interested in building products around it because it will save them money to pay for working code (and support) rather than trying to reimplement the same functionality from scratch. They won't reinvent the wheel if paying for a proprietary license is cheaper, and the revenue from the proprietary licensing can fund new development work.
Now, consider an end-user application, such as a word processor. It's something end users want and need, but other proprietary vendors have no reason to pay for a proprietary license if the application is available under an Open Source license, because there's no need to build a larger product around it. There's no leverage, so it would be very difficult to support a business and fund new development work if nobody is willing to pay for it.
Free Software and Open Source Software are great, but they tend to ignore a basic problem -- while distribution of software is cheap, production of new software is expensive. If nobody is paying for the distribution of the software, how do you fund the development?
Stallman suggests writing new software as consulting gigs, and requiring it be placed under the GPL. That may work for him, but it won't work for most programmers. Most of us have to work full-time jobs to support ourselves, and often only get to work on Free Software by sacrificing our "free time" to the cause. That's no way to have a life, even if it does get some software written and released.
We need a solution which allows talented developers to spend their days programming for the common good without starving in the process. I'm not sure yet what that solution might be, but I'm quite certain that spending all your time writing software that will be given away (and in some cases exploited) isn't the answer. Maybe one more copy of a program isn't worth a lot, but the time the programmer spent crafting that program is a valuable, scarce resource. And the economics just aren't working.
And you know the really sad part about this situation? If someone does come up with a solution, it will necessarily have to take a different form than Free Software currently does, which will anger all the zealots who demand that everything must be free and GPL'd, but who refuse to examine the fundamental problem which has yet to be addressed. Of course, many of these people claim to be fighting for "free speech" when they're really more interested in "free beer", truth be known...
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
You realy don't understand emulation.
That last 1% compatibility may be the diference betwean what we have now and Office 95/97/2000/xp running better under wine than they do under Windows. It may be the little bit neaded to make 30 of the 50 most important Windows programs work.
So yes. they have an extreamly valid point. Unlike a lot of other projects, Wine _has_ sean people attempt to fork it in varius ways. Sometimes they cave in and submit the patches, other times that code is lost to the comunity.
You see with any emulation project the coding get's harder as it gets closer. The figure I herd was that the last 10% of compatibility was 90% of the work.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
As a subscriber, I see my monthly contribution to TransGaming as a contribution to Wine development. TG keeps key portions of its code close to its chest (or as close as you can get with the AFPL license), but they have donated a lot of code (See http://www.winehq.com/hypermail/wine-devel/2002/0
But now, I fear that my contribution will be devalued by the added cost of TransGaming/WineHQ cooperation. If it costs TG more to prepare a patch for the LGPLed WineHQ tree, it's like losing subscribers. Or looking at it another way, it's like my money didn't go to contributing back to WineHQ. Instead, it got lost to the 'overhead' introduced by this push toward 'Free Software'.
You realy don't understand emulation.
I do understand specifications and how to find the differences when an implementation does not match the specification. It is difficult but not impossible.
That last 1% compatibility may be the diference betwean what we have now and Office 95/97/2000/xp running better under wine than they do under Windows. It may be the little bit neaded to make 30 of the 50 most important Windows programs work.
I did not get that impression from the developers on the wine mailing list.
Ah, but the proponents of free software want to do away with commercial software (at least the ones who really piss me off do). Just between you, me, and anyone else who reads this - I actually agree to a certain extent with their philosophies, but as long as there are assholes around, I feel it necessary to defend the right to earn a buck of the products of my labor.
And off the support.
And from licensing the ideas involved in the production of the product.
IF I choose to do so.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.