Installshield 6 (inter-proc) patches

[Patrik Stridvall]

> Patrik Stridvall <ps at leissner.se> writes:
> 
> > They might even have an implementation from scratch with no 
> Wine code at
> > all.
> > I can see no difference between for example their DLL and a 
> Microsoft DLL
> > running under Wine, regardless of Wine being GPL or LGPL or 
> whatever.
> 
> There is no difference whatsoever, as long as it is not based on Wine
> code. We can't (and shouldn't) prevent anybody from reimplementing a
> dll from scratch.

My point exactly.

> What we can (and should IMO) prevent is people using
> our own code against us.

Yes, but does the example below ...
 
> > Then we have the middle case by have say the Crypto API that is
> > a part of ADVAPI32. Does distributing a whole file replacement of 
> > dlls/advapi32/crypt.c represent a violation of GPL or LGPL?
> > In that case why? The Crypto API is largely independent of the
> > rest of ADVAPI32 it could as well be a separate DLL.

... really violate the LGPL IYO (In Your Opinion)?

I really can't see why it is significant that Microsoft put the
Crypto API in ADVAPI32.DLL instead of say a seperate DLL,
say CRYPTO32.DLL.

> > Any protection that (L)GPL provides is to a large part based on
> > myth and legend.
> 
> I think you are very mistaken here. The protection is based strictly
> on copyright law, and if anything is certain it is that copyright law
> is going to become even stronger in the coming years.

There are certainly a lot of people that _wish_ to make copyright law
stronger.
However even more important is a copyright law that make logical sense.

I think doctrine of derived work is one of the most serious mistakes in how
copyright law today is formulated. The basic idea is a good one and I
support
it, but I really think it should have been formulated in term of combined
works
instead of derived works.

That is, if you combine your work with somebody elses work and distribute
it together you must have the permission all the authors of all parts the
combined work consists of.

But that is exactly what the doctrine of derived work says, you object,
what is the difference?

Well, the difference is subtle. Under a strict doctrine of combined work
ONLY distribution of the combined work is prohibited not providing a 
work that can be combined with another work to form a combined work
regardless of whether this was intended or not.

Under such a doctrine, the (L)GPL doesn't make any sense (and thus have no 
power) if all if you only provide patches. Note that you only have to accept
the
(L)GPL if you distribute the (L)GPL:ed work and you don't.

The fact that end user can combine your work and the (L)GPL:ed work, perhaps
using a script you wrote, perhaps not, doesn't matter att all under a strict
combined work doctrine since no distribution is taking place.

The big question for the future is the doctrine of derived work really
a strict doctrine of combined work?

Note that
1. This is the only thing it AFAIK has been used for in actual court cases
2. This might be the only possible constitutional interpretation of
   copyright law, because otherwise somebody (A) can prevent somebody else
(B) 
   from "speaking" based on what some third party (C) can used the "speech"
   lawfully acquired from B together with some "speech" lawfully acquired 
   from A. Especially since what C might do is most likely not even be
illegal.

> In addition our situation is even easier since the dll interfaces are
> already defined for us; the difficulties you see are purely imaginary,
> I don't think there would be any technical problem applying the LGPL
> to Wine.

Technical problems perhaps not, but does it help?
Especially given how much it might hurt.

> The GPL is another story, but we clearly don't want to go there if
> Wine is to remain useful for running proprietary applications.

Agreed.
 
> > In addition hypocritical people at for example Slashdot also 
> > seems to wish to apply different standard at open source licenses
> > and proprietary licenses.
> > 
> > So company cries that their products shouldn't be hacked (having a
> > part replace) should be ignored despite their insistance that a
> > paragraf of their license has been violated, while any violations
> > of the (L)GPL doing essentialy the same thing (replacing a part)
> > should be strictly enforced. :-)
> 
> If you don't understand the fundamental difference between the GPL and
> a standard EULA, I'd suggest studying the issue a bit more.  And
> www.gnu.org is probably a better reference than Slashdot to learn
> about this kind of things <g>

Oh, I read both these sites and more.

Sure there is a difference, as the current law is written, but the big
question does it make sense that there is a difference?

The fundamental issue is the same.
1. I am the author of some work
2. You would like to use my work in some way.
2. I'm prepared to make the work available to you under some conditions

As a side note, because of copyright as some sort of public contract not all
possible conditions are enforcabled. For example first sale doctrine says
I can't control what happends to a specific copy of a work once I have sold
it.

But that doesn't change the fact the situations are basicly the same
and I was not talking about law here rather about morality.
I said hypocritical didn't I?

> > True, but that doesn't worry me so much, since very few non games
> > depend of DirectX and this allows us concentrate on what is really
> > important getting commonly used productivity applications to run
> > under Wine.
> 
> In short, because you don't care about games Wine doesn't have to
> support them. I strongly disagree with this sentiment; even though I
> don't care much about games myself, I want Wine to be able to run them
> just like other applications. And again, DirectX is just one example
> of something that could happen with any other part of Wine.

What I mean is that, we can't have everything. We don't have the
resources to do everything. We have to make priorities and people
playing games are people that are unlikely to provide a lots of
new developers or other resources for the core Wine project as
it is organized. 

Companies on the other hand wanting to run their productivity application
are much more likely to provide resources developing Wine further especially
after we reach the point there their normal applications run close to
perfectly and they wish to make their more unusual application to run
as well to be able to provide a say all Linux desktop.

Therefore I'm happy to leave things like DirectX to companies like 
Transgaming for the time being since people that wants to play games
are more likely to be happy with the way they can support Transgaming
ie paying a monthly fee.

> > That is true, but I still think we made the right choice.
> > If we had made Wine LGPL we might have prevent Transgaming
> > from entering the market and a change now might prevent others
> > from doing so.
> 
> I don't think so; they would certainly have had to make some
> adjustments to the business model, but I think it is definitely
> possible to build a business on an LGPL code base. Of course these
> days building any kind of business is quite difficult, but I don't
> think LGPL vs. X11 is going to be the difference that makes otherwise
> successful businesses fail.

Using your strict interpretion of the LPGL it will significantly increase
the cost of entry to the market, thus requiring higher risk of entering
the market, even with a basicly sound business model.

> > I think it is very dangerous for us to reject the help we can get
> > to increase the mind share of Wine and derivates as a whole,
> > inspite of any inconviences for the core Wine project.
> > 
> > Wine has not yet accieved the breakthrough on the desktop market
> > that Linux did on the server market and until then we need all the
> > allies we can yet, regardless of their actually "loyalties".
> 
> Well, I strongly disagree. Wine is supposed to be a free
> implementation of Windows; if making it successful requires making it
> non-free, we might as well stop right now.

"He who defend everything, defends nothing"

Need I say more?

> Anyway we are not going to convince each other. I take note that you
> are opposed to the change, even if I admit I'm a bit surprised; it
> seems last time we discussed licenses you were quite favorable to the
> LGPL.

Well, with age comes wisdom (or senility). :-)

Seriously, we made that choice we made in hope that it would be
a good one and I think it is to early to say that the choice was
a bad one. Changing licenses out of panic is a bad idea. Let
calm down and think this through properly.