Clarification on my call for license change

[Sean Farley]

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 16:48, Francois Gouget wrote:

> On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Daniel Walker wrote:
> [...]
> > 	Wine is a _re_implementation .. 90% of the code we write is double
> > work, triple work sometimes .. It doesn't bother me that we had to
> > rewrite something, since after all that is what we do.. Wouldn't we have
> > it easy is Microsoft would just release their source? The real question
> > is, if Wine was GPL'd would TransGaming have written the DCOM code in
> > the first place?
>
>    No, the real question is whether Transgaming would have written the
> DCOM code if CodeWeavers had not released its typelib code in the first
> place.

Would CodeWeavers have written its typelib code if others had not
created Wine?  No.  Wine was not written originally for financial gain,
was it?  If people make money off of something I do for free without
desire of capitalizing on it, I do not see a problem.

>    Because it seems to me that one of the main arguments of the BSD
> proponents is that we are stupid and that we should have kept all the
> code for ourselves.

No one is claiming you are stupid.  We may disagree, but that does not
infer stupidity on others.  Some on both sides may see the opposition as
ignorant, but that does not mean stupid.

> Maybe they are right. But which of the following two scenarios leads
> to the more healthy Wine and Wine marketplace?
>
>  * The one where we released our window-management code, did dll
> separation work, added cross-process handle support, added cross-process
> messaging, released our typelib code (essential for InstallShield/COM
> support), released our true-type support, improved winelib and released
> countless bug fixes.
>
>  * Or the one where the public Wine has none of the above (unless new
> volunters had magically sprung up out of thin air).
>
>    Where would the first scenario, which appears to be what BSD
> proponents advocate, leave the Wine community? Which one do Transgaming
> and Lindows prefer? Do they really prefer not to benefit from any of our
> code in the future?

If they never had written it, would you have?  Were you planning to?
Was anyone going to write it?  If any of these were yes, why did they
stop?  If I knew I was not going to have access to something, I would
have just filed that away in my mind as non-existent and continued with
my project.

>    The Wine competitive landscape has changed a lot in the past year,
> and I believe that it is unpractical for us to continue releasing all
> our code under the current license.
>    We could definitely turn our Wine proprietary but as the above
> scenario illustrates this would be bad for the Wine community, including
> for our competitors; even if they don't realise it. And I believe that
> all Wine companies need a thriving open-source Wine.
>    That's why I think it is important for us (Wine community +
> CodeWeavers + Transgaming + Lindows) to find a better solution.

CodeWeavers does not sell a proprietary version of Wine.  Correct?
Revenue comes in from the service of writing code.  Correct?  How does
it harm CodeWeavers to not have access to someone else's code?  If a
company needs it, you could just charge them for it.  Correct?

There was a comment about the phone companies in the U.S. a few years
back concerning there dislike of people using modems too much and
over-using the phone system.  It was basically that the phone companies
were the only companies known to complain about having too much demand.
If you need to write more code as a service to another company, I see an
opportunity to make more money.

Sean
--------------
scf at farley.org