Installshield 6 (inter-proc) patches

[John Alvord]

On 17 Dec 2001 11:54:46 -0800, Alexandre Julliard
<julliard at winehq.com> wrote:

>Patrik Stridvall <ps at leissner.se> writes:
>
>> So you mean that all the people that are current voluntering
>> to work of Wine won't work on Wine if it is almost complete
>> just because somebody else have done the parts they need
>> to run their applications and that they will happily pay for
>> the right to use it.
>
>No, I'm not saying they won't work on it when it's almost complete.
>I'm saying that there may not be enough incentive to complete it if
>all the parts are available under more or less proprietary
>licenses. Maybe I'm wrong, but your reasoning that it's OK for people
>who want games to have to pay for it certainly doesn't reassure me.
>
>> In that case it would be disasterous to make Wine run
>> all Microsoft implemented non-core Wine DLL:s because
>> then everybody would just be happy to use the Microsoft
>> DLL:s and nothing beyond non-core would ever be
>> implemented.
>
>It would not be a disaster, but it is certainly a potential problem
>too. It is a smaller problem first because making the dlls run is
>about as much work as reimplementing them, and because they are
>completely proprietary, not half-way open source. But yes, I do think
>a number of features could have improved faster if people didn't use
>native dlls to work around the problems.

I am just a watcher, though I have dreams of being an active developer
someday.... when I don't need my day job.

During the recent discussions, it struck me that the legal opinions
being offered are a red herring. Projects such as Wine depend much
more on the sociology of the situation than the legal fine points. 

To that end, Alexandre has a critical choke hold on Wine development.
All proposed patches flow through him. [Logically that could be a
small subset of people with CVS update rights.]  He can make decisions
based on technical, artistic, developmental reasoning.

So, if some other entity [OE] is doing something not in the best
interest of the whole project, he can simply refuse to cooperate with
them. That means not engage in technical discussions, not take
patches, etc. As the OE source base drifts away from Wine, their cost
do doing business will steadily increase compared to a cooperative
stance. If the OE is named as a non-cooperator, most other developers
will tend to ignore their problems, also increasing their cost of
doing business. It doesn't have to be anything dramatic. Cooperation
will decrease their cost of doing business in the long term. They can
take short term advantage but long term the cost will be severe.

Best wishes,

john alvord