wine-devel digest, Vol 1 #584 - 10 msgs

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On Sat, 15 Dec 2001, Roger Fujii wrote:

> "Dimitrie O. Paun" <dimi at cs.toronto.edu> wrote:
> > > I feel rather dismayed by the whole discussion.
> > Maybe this is so because the way you approached the issue.
> > See, you are concerned with the semantics of things, the 'why',
> 
> I think the better question is "what" as in what is trying to be accomplished?

That's exactly what I was saying. We should not concern ourselves with
other people's agendas (or their 'why'). We should just look at the
'what'. And in our case, I claim the 'what' is simply to chose a licence
that maximizes Wine's development.

> > 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.
> 
> You probably meant something other than what you wrote here.  Existence for the
> sake of existence is useless.  

No, I meant what I said.  By 'syntax' I was referring to the 'what'.

> I would presume the point of wine is to provide a WINXX environment on
> top of x86 platforms.

True, but that was not the point of the discussion. We weren't debating
what Wine should do, we where debating what licence we should choose for
Wine. I thought that was a well understood point in this thread.

> > Let's look at the first part: make Wine evolve faster.
> >   LGPL
> >     pros:
> >         -- _far_ bigger code base for sharing/reuse
> 
> and how to do arrive at this?  the modified BSD license is professed by FSF
> to be compatible with the GPL.

Yes, one way. BSD-style code can be used in (L)GPL code, not the other way
around. So, in our case, other (L)GPL projects could use Wine code, but
Wine (with the current licence) can not make use of code from (L)GPLed
projects.


> >         -- _far_ bigger developer base
> 
> Can you actually say for certain that the gain of developers by using LGPL
> is less than the loss of developers by using BSD?

Yes. I'm certain of this. Most open source developers prefer the (L)GPL to
the BSD licence. Let's look at SourceForge (today, 20:05 EST):
  OSI Approved:  19939
	GPL:	   14507
       LGPL:	    2016
	BSD:	    1331
   Artistic:	     608
    Mozilla:	     309
	MIT:	     301
     Apache:	     179
  Propriatary:   449
  Public Domain: 622

> 
> >    -cons:
> >         -- we may lose developers that are opposed philosophically to the
> >            GPL ideals
> >         -- less commercial freedom when using the code base
> 
> Setting philosophy aside, there are many companies that will not touch
> *anything* with the letters GPL in it, due to what is perceived (rightly
> or wrongly) to be its consequences. 

GPL is one thing, LGPL is another.

> It is not an overstatement to say
> that *GPL is a net discouragement to commercial development - the GPL
> and FSF are openly hostile to proprietary software - PERIOD.  Anyone who
> claims otherwise must also believe that M$ is "encouraging innovation".

Again, there is a huge difference between GPL and LGPL. GPL is not even an
option for Wine, so let's not talk about it.

> I can also add a few more cons:
>           --  FSF discourages use of LGPL

I don't care what FSF does, or its political agenda. This is the very
'why' I want so much to avoid. However, not even the FSF would suggest GPL
for Wine, due to its nature. Remember, FSF's own glibc is LGPL for crying
out loud!

>           --  Discourages commercial companies for its use/development.

It does not. This is all misconception, and people will learn. If they
don't and the code is useful, someone who understands that will make a
succesful business out of it, and people will learn the hard way.

>           --  Adds more confusion to the mix - LGPL ramifications is less
>               understood than the GPL.

Quite the contrary -- LGPL add _stability_ which should help businesses
long term.

> > 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.
> 
> and how do you arrive at this conclusion?  I would say that apache, X11, BSD
> would disprove what you are saying.

I am quite aware that there are successful BSD-licenced project. But it is
my firm believe that in the long term, the (L)GPL creates the right
framework to give a project a life of its own. Right now it's hard to say,
because most projects are still maintained/developed by their creators, we
don't know how things will evolve in 15-20 years and beyond. But from a
business point of view, it is quite important that you can 'predict' a
little the future long term, and the LGPL gives you _much_ better means
than the BSD licence.

> The problem wine has is that it is not a small endeavor like most GPLed software.
> If you look at the larger projects (gcc, gdb, openoffice, apache, x11, mozilla..),
> you will find the ones that are most successful long term are the ones with
> active corporate involvement.  With this in mind, I think wine is better served
> by having its use proliferate and being more complete (even at the expense 
> of having propriatary extensions), than having something that is incomplete but
> "free".

Certainly availability is very important. But not at all costs. If so,
just use MS Windows, it's here today, and works a hell of a lot better
than Wine does (or even hopes of working in the near term).

--
Dimi.