Wine license change

[Brett Glass]

At 11:24 PM 2/10/2002, Marcus Brubaker wrote:

>I doubt they would release "absolutely as much as they can" because releasing *anything* can potentially forfeit a part of competitive advantage.  

Not true. There's always a cost/benefit analysis to be done. Since NOT
contributing code incurs a heavy cost in manpower, and also (if it's
a bug fix) reduces the public's confidence in WINE and derivatives of
it, it really pays to do so unless the code is highly strategic. Witness
what has happened in the BSD world.

>Let me explain that a bit.  Having worked in a corporate programming environment for quite a while now I've had a chance to see how a lot of decisions get made.  The absolute one thing that can kill a project is uncertainty.  With a BSD type license you have a LOT of uncertainty.  

Not so. With a BSD license you have a simple license that says what it says
and has been upheld in court. With an FSF license you have a huge document,
with a long block of misleading propaganda at the top that could invalidate
the whole thing (if the "recitals" in a contract are false or misleading,
the entire contract is often invalid). The FSF licenses have NEVER been
upheld or even fully interpreted by the courts. Want to talk about uncertainty?
With one of the FSF's licenses, you truly do not know where you stand. Even
if you ignore the fact that they're discriminatory (and discriminate against
you as a programmer!), this should be sufficient reason to stay far, far
away from these licenses.

--Brett Glass