Installshield 6 (inter-proc) patches

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On Sat, 15 Dec 2001, Gerard Patel wrote:

> At 07:47 PM 13/12/2001 -0800, you wrote:
> >
> >What do others think?
> 
> I feel rather dismayed by the whole discussion.

Gerard,

Maybe this is so because the way you approached the issue.
See, you are concerned with the semantics of things, the 'why', and I'm
afraid this is just the road to mandness. To see why, read your email: you
talk about user's rights, whether the current set of laws is just, wether
the current punishment for thieves is justifiable, etc. On top of it all,
you seem to suggest that LGPLing Wine would transform us in some sort of
evil company that runs around and puts people into jail! First, I hope you
realise that our choice for the licence will not change the legal system
or the world at large in no way, so discussing such issues in this thread
will just open up an unrelated can of wroms that has plagued humanity for
centuries. Second, even suggesting that a LGPL Wine will the an evil
'intelectual property' monster is ridiculous. Just a reminder, most open
source projects are (L)GPL and _that_ community is the only significant
force in today's society fighting against such things as software patents,
DCMA, SSSCA, etc.

That being said, how shell we approach this issue. I claim we need to
detach ourselves from the semantics, and stick to the syntactic
manipulation to make any progress (for those familiar with logic and its
history, that was the only way people made any progress there). In other
words, let's leave the 'why' to anyone's imagination -- each and every
persons has his or her reasons of doing things, and no amount of
discussion will reach a consensus in that area.

If we agree up to this point, what is the 'syntax' I was referring to?
Well, IMO this is a stronger Wine that keeps evolving and that has a life
of its own. Wether this is good or not for users it's irrelevant. Some may
say yes, others (e.g. Microsoft) may say no. I submit that we that this
goal as axiomatic and we go from there.

Now, I can argue that this very axiom eliminates any sort of proprietary
licence, but I will not do it since it's understood by everybody here. I
will just look at the two possible options: BSD vs. LGPL. There are two
points in my axiom:
  1. we should try to make Wine stronger (e.g. evolve faster)
  2. Wine should have a life of it's own

Let's look at the first part: make Wine evolve faster.
  LGPL
    pros:
	-- _far_ bigger code base for sharing/reuse
	-- _far_ bigger developer base
   -cons:
	-- we may lose developers that are opposed philosophically to the
	   GPL ideals
	-- less commercial freedom when using the code base
  BSD
   (just negate the above)

And now for the second part: Wine should have a life of its own. This is,
to my mind, the crucial part. The problem with a BSD licence is that it
does not ensure that. The cool and amazing thing about the (L)GPL is that
it puts in place the right feedback loop (or vicious circle if you
will) that ensures a project a life of its own independent of who's
developing and maintaining it: the bigger the project becomes, the more
people will use it, (up to now BSD and GPL are the same), the more people
will contribute to it, the bigger the project becomes!!! It's the
equivalent for the 'rich get richer', but the currency is not money but
usefulness/code. It is simple, yet brilliant.

It is to this very cycle that we owe the success that the Open Source
enjoyes. Any successful system (any, not only software) that survives the
test of time is based on intrinsic feedback loops, not a (temporal)
political drive of the participants. All politically (only) driven systems
are bound to fail (e.g communism). We NEED the feedback loop to keep Wine
going in 10-20 years from now. I can not stress this enough.

--
Dimi.