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Debian And WineX
fdsa writes "After a heated debate, and under some pressure by TransGaming, an 'intent to package' WineX from sourceforge CVS for (non-free) Debian has been withdrawn. The message provides a good summary of the recent Wine chaos, and notes how WineX is effectively under a different license than stated. Here's a mail from their CEO Gavriel State on the issue."
I think the CEO's email makes their concern quite clear. They acknowledge that the current license can't prevent anyone from making a debian package. I think he's presented quite a reasonable argument for third parties re-packaging their code. What it doesn't address is why they don't make debian packages themselves. (please forgive me if they do, I don't use any flavor of Wine, and the CEO's email seemes to imply they don't, and have canceled plans to do so.)
It seems that most Gentoo users are ex-Debian and ex-Slackware users who got fed up with all the bureaucracy and stagnation of these distros. After using Debian for some 5 years I can say that my machine is really happy with Gentoo, while it was pretty scared with Debian.
I'm not saying that to flame any distro, I'd just like to point to Debian and Slackware users there is another decent way to follow.
This just illustrates why its important to understand the license governing a project before contributing to it. It is also the reason why the OSI keeps a list of approved licenses.
If you didn't take time to understand the license before contributing to the project, you can't complain that you don't like the result.
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing
http://www.linuxgames.com/news/index.php3/5653
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
You know, I was really hoping this was going to take off. The only reason why I still have Windows on my computer is for games. Everything else I can do under Linux or Wine.
It's true that Transgaming was making a huge contribution to Linux, in an area where Linux was very poor. They were not that expensive with what they asked for their efforts. (Subscription based; $5 per month, $50 for a year)
However, they stated on their website that after 20.000 people became a member they will GPL all their code. Now Wine is LGPL they complain that it is too restrictive, while LGPL is less restrictive then GPL.
Another thing, the place where they mentioned the 20.000 people limit (Business Model), has suddenly been changed in the past 2 days. I know because I was looking into subscribing to them. I was even planning on mailing them to ask them how many people they already had. So is it a lie? Were they ever going to GPL their code? We had only that statement that disappeared without a trace.
So presumably no. Why? Because in their CEO's rant about Wine's license change to GPL, he states that it is impossible due to DMCA issues with the copyright protection they implemented. Also, they would for some reason be 'locked' into supporting Wine even if their business model would not pay what they want it to pay.
I can agree a little with the copy protection bit. However their claim that it contains highly sensitive information is nonsense. Advanced copy protections like SafeDisc and Securom have been reversed completely. Look up any reverser's webboard and you'll be smacked around the ears with all the little tricks that they use. With that you could even easily emulate the protection (which is already done in programs like Daemon-Tools).
So that can't be it. Did I mention that programs like InstallShield and Wise have been completely reversed too? Again, with this info around that can be found on any reversers board, anyone could write his own InstallShield installer.
The DMCA threat is overrated, although the DMCA has been abused for more ridiculous things already.
Then secondly, being locked in for support. I write some crappy OpenSource tools. I do this under an Artistic License. But with this, or even the GPL, there is NO obligation mentioned anywhere that I have to give support on it. Better still, it is explicitly stated that NO LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY is given with this software.
So what do they complain about? Maybe they claim that they have to keep up to date with the Wine tree? Also not true. They can take any copy of Wine, and work on it, as long as they publish their changes. No other obligation then that.
So where does this leave us? Remember SSH? The original author (Klonen if I recall correctly) had SSH as a GPL package, but later on changed it to a pay-for-commercial license. A group of people took the last GPL'd version and coded on it until they got OpenSSH, which is a perfectly fine SSH client and 100% GPL. This is a GOOD thing.
Now Transgaming is pushing Rewind, which is pretty much the same coupe as OpenSSH, except they do it so that the X11 license can be kept. Now you can argue that Transgaming deserves money for the work they do. Well I agree with that, but how far should we support that? Is Transgaming just putting up a friendly OpenSource front so they can get people to work for them for free? Or is it to get people to like them?
In short, by pushing the Rewind branch, they take away time and resources from the main Wine tree. This hurts us normal users. They put up a false front to attract coders and clients. If they were honest about their work, and it would help the Linux community then I'd gladly pay them for their efforts, but now I'm pretty much disillusioned.