Installshield 6 (inter-proc) patches

[Patrik Stridvall]

> > Note that I do not pretend to know how the courts will rule.
> > But I do know that sticking the head in the sand and pretending
> > that (L)GPL doesn't have large potential holes in it is quite
> > naive and potentially dangerous.
> 
> Then if the LGPL holes are dangerous, the X11 license should be even
> more dangerous; after all it's a much larger hole than the LGPL will
> ever have. I still don't understand where you are trying to go with
> your argument.

Sure it has a larger hole. But at least it is obvious that is does.
It doesn't make you believe good things will happend.

The point is that you seem to wish some things to happend and
I point out that LGPL provides not guarentee that it will actually
will happend despite that LGPL at a quick glance looks like
it in some meaning forces what you wish to happend.

One the other hand the LGPL might scare away potential companies
wishing to extend Wine. See below.
 
> No, of course the LGPL doesn't provide absolute protection; nothing
> does, and I don't think absolute protection is desirable either. There
> are some things that the LGPL clearly allows, some that it clearly
> forbids, and a number of border cases, that frankly are only
> interesting to people who want to try to get around the license
> restrictions. And what would be the point of doing that?  

Making their business model work. 
Trying to ensure investment return.

> If the
> license is not acceptable to someone, they don't have to use the
> code. Who would risk bad PR and potential lawsuits just to prove that
> they can find a loophole in the LGPL?

So we lose some possible companies willing to help in two step.
1. Because they do not dare
2. Because you (or somebody else) sue them

Great idea. NOT.
 
> You really make it sound like the LGPL is some kind of unexplored
> wilderness that we shouldn't venture into. 

We are not a normal software project and thus what really is a derived
work when faced with a lot unimplemented stuff are much more difficult
to know. I have tried to show that LGPL in itself is pretty weak and
are likely to be even weaker then faced with Wine's special circumstances.

> The fact is that a large
> majority of free software projects use either the GPL or the LGPL, and
> in practice it works just fine for them, just as I'm confident it
> would work just fine for us.

Normal software project doesn't have any large design with a lot of not
yet implemented functions, there it makes sense for some company to say:
Hey I could provide an implementation of this special part under this
special business model.

Face it we are not a normal software project and the arguments they
used for chosing (L)GPL are not really relevant here.

Note that I'm not denying that convincing arguements for choosing
LGPL might exists, but reference to earlier success is not one
of them. Your argument that LGPL forces good things to happend
is not entirely convincing either for reasons stated earlier.

The current license is something that is easy to understand and
are unlikely to scare companies like Transgaming away, but can
you really say the say same about LGPL?