Installshield 6 (inter-proc) patches

[Alexandre Julliard]

Patrik Stridvall <ps at leissner.se> writes:

> > 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.

That would be the case if the code they are using magically turned
LGPL once they had invested millions. But that's not possible, since
only new code becomes LGPL. Now, if someone is basing his business
model on turning LGPL code proprietary by exploiting possible
loopholes in the license, I wouldn't suggest investing in his
company... I don't think our goal in choosing a license is to make
sure every flawed business model can succeed. There are lots of
reasonable business models that can be built on a LGPL (or GPL) code
base.

> 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?

OK, now we are getting somewhere. So your argument is basically that
the LGPL might scare some companies away. Yes, I agree that's a
possibility. Most likely these companies will have been scared away
from Linux already, since many other things they need are also LGPL
(most notably the C library). But of course this possibility cannot be
excluded.

I think that the risk of this happening is not larger than the risk of
having companies hold hostage pieces of Wine, and the damage in the
second case is much larger; so I think the LGPL would minimize the
potential damage to the project, even if damage cannot be excluded in
any situation.  Of course only the future can tell us who is right.

-- 
Alexandre Julliard
julliard at winehq.com