WineCorp (was Re: Wine license change)

[Roger Fujii]

Brett Glass wrote:
> At 04:26 AM 2/14/2002, Roger Fujii wrote:
> >This scheme would make the license awkward, because you have to add in
> >"oh, by the way, all the contributions you make will be given to winecorp
> >with an unrestricted license" clause.  It is far cleaner and simpler to
> >require contributions to assign the copyright.  OpenOffice does this.
>
> The danger of this approach is that EVERYONE -- even contributors -- must
> go to the organization that owns the copyright and ask, "Mother, may I?"
> before doing things with the code.

well, I think the assumption here was that winecorp would always release
an lgped (or whatever viral license) version of the tree, so that 'normal'
use would not be inhibited.   I suppose there is a small window between
submission/transfer of copyright and the publication into the tree where
the maintainer/licensor may go insane and to something silly, but that
scenario would definitely fall under "done in bad faith".

> Commercial entities will have no guarantee that they'll be allowed to
> use even their own contributions -- especially if their competitors are
> part of the body that grants permissions.  Politics can also rear their
> head, with favoritism toward specific vendors.

you do have a point - given that this licensing issue started up again
because of what appears to be competitive/political reasons, I guess one
shouldn't ignore the possible influence it might have in the future.

-r