Installshield 6 (inter-proc) patches

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Roger Fujii wrote:

> "Dimitrie O. Paun" wrote:
> 
> > Technicalities aside, the LGPL spirit seems to be accepted by most people.
> 
> I have no problems with the 'spirit' of the GPL (or at least, how most
> (ie, minus rms) people sees it).

Excellent. In fact, I disagree with RMS violently, I've read the link you
sent me (about the glibc takeover) a long time ago. But this is why we
have to separate out intentions from fact. Or semantics from syntax. Or
whatever you want to call it. In other words, we can use the LGPL even if
we disagree violently with RMS. Just like Linus chose the GPL for Linux,
even if he can't even talk to RMS.

> > We've heard no end of discussion of what represents the code, and
> > so on, but in reality (please Patrik :)), Wine is a _well_defined_ piece
> > of software.
> 
> The problem is that it is *not* a 'well_defined' piece.  Is it a library?
> An app?  You run it as an app, but the executable you're running it with
> thinks it's a library.   Or is msword (or whatever you're running) now a
> library.  I can see rational arguments either way.  

That's a separte problem. Is your claim that we can't use the LGPL because
we can't define what Wine is??? If this is _your_ problem, I truely belive
that can be solved. And the solution is fairly simple: whatever code uses
a DLL's internal functions (that is, functions that are not exported in
the DLL's spec files), is said to link directly with Wine and thus is
subject to the LGPL licence. In fact, Wine is the simplest project to LGPL
because its boundaries are defined by someone else! Moreover, these
boundaries are fairly well documented and accepted by most of the software
industry.

> Try reading section 2C of the LGPL and tell me how it's good for commercial
> companies.

Again, let's not look at the details of the LGPL. Let's stick to the
spirit for now. It's difficult as it is to discuss about these things, if
we start now to worry about every small detail, we will not get anywere
anytime soon.


> If LGPL is so clean, simple and nice, why does mozilla/openoffice/apache/perl
> not use it?

If the LGPL is so scary, how come the glibc uses it, and how come that
does not scare people for using Linux in a comercial setting???

> > Now, I claim that the LGPL is _way_better_ for the commercial interests in the long term,
> 
> I keep hearing this, but don't see any reasoning behind it.  

I will cover the commercial stuff in a separate email, this one's getting
long as it is.
 
> > Saying 'someday' is not good enough. Without a bound, it's
> > meaningless. What if M$ says: we will eventually open source Windows. Will
> > that make you happy? But more importantly, does it _mean_ anything. I'm
> > afraid it does not (and that can actually be proven logically:)).
> 
> er, huh?

If you don't put a bound on time, but simply say 'eventually', it can be
proven that it doesn't mean anything, because it is as if you did not say
anything in the first place. It does not give any additional information.

--
Dimi.