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SWSoft Out of Compliance With the GPL
MBCook writes "According to the Official Wine Wiki, SWSoft's Parallels 3.0 contains LGPL code. It seems that the new 3D acceleration features of Parallels 3.0 are based on Wine code (SWSoft isn't hiding this), but despite repeated requests they have not yet released their changes for the Wine developers. It has now been 22 days since SWSoft was first contacted on this issue; at the time they promised the code within 1-2 days. They have been contacted numerous time and currently say that they are waiting on 'legal department approval.'" Update: 07/03 00:06 GMT by KD : Reader something_wicked_thi notes that Parallels released the source code the next day.
first post?
As a consultant for several large companies, I'd always done my work on
Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do
some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was
very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our
exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way
(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we
were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process
went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were
considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that
we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It
was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something
called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license
states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available.
Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money
we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would
now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any
products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to
its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever
use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult
position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with
another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no
option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive
with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually
guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my
experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my
associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to
something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source".
Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure
it remains only a bit player.
Thank you for your time.
Idiot. Do the world a favor and off yourself.
No asshole, you must make the code available upon request, independent of if you bought it or even used it. Stop defending your shit software because apple utilized it you fucking corporate shill. Go back and play with your WiiWii and let the adults worry about it.
Read the GPL again. If you don't provide the sources together with the binariees you must provide the sources to anyone who asks for them.
Propriety hardware. Proprietary software. Lawsuits against web sites. Lawsuits over 'look and feel'. Software companies that freely steal from the GPL. I'll stick with GNU/Linux, thanks very much.
This is just a plain example on expected negetive effect of GNU Protectipon License on Open Source movement and community. How predictable!
Wine is vapor ware anyways. It is highly unlikely they will every produce a working windows emulator. They've been at it for 13 years. Its not like Microsoft took 13 years to write windows 95 and they didn't even have a reference platform to go by. I've tried wine many times. I've even tried to contribute in the debugging process. And got sick of getting flamed by wine developers when all I was doing was trying to help. The project is useless. Nothing will ever come of it.