BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business

[Boris Buegling]

On Sun, Feb 17, 2002 at 05:05:35AM -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
> At 08:10 AM 2/16/2002, Boris Buegling wrote:
> 
> [Gratuitous insults deleted]
>
if you could just do this in your mails ;)
> >I have to agree with you on that point. I think the problem of this discussion
> >is, that neither the current X11/BSD license nor the LGPL are the right thing 
> >for WINE. We need another approach: a license that protects _both_ companies,
> >which are providing support (Codeweavers) AND companies, which are providing 
> >code (Transgaming/Lindows). ATM, Codeweavers provides code and gets nothing 
> >back 
> 
> Whereas, under the (L)GPL, it would... provide code and get nothing back.
> 
> The (L)GPL would not protect CodeWeavers from anything. In fact, it would
> (as I've demonstrated in earlier messages) drive away at least some 
> customers. 
> 
> So:
> 
> If Codeweavers' business model is flawed, it can't make it regardless of 
> licensing (and in fact would be worse off after a license change).
> 
> If, on the other hand, Codeweavers' business model is NOT flawed, the
> current license would be fine. It would in fact be favored by end users
> and developers like myself (who cannot fix bugs if there's a risk of (
> L)GPL contamination) and by potential customers of Codeweavers. 
> 
> There's therefore nothing to be gained from a license change... and
> a lot to lose.
> 
> --Brett
> 
> 
The LGPL would protect Codeweavers from projects like Lindows (as it looks to me). Lindows gets all the code Codeweavers have done and adds something to it and
sells this whole package. With LGPL, they had to give the code back or they 
can't do their project. Since they are not giving back their code, there is no
loss in not doing their project for the WINE project as a whole. A coding 
company like Lindows gain everything, without giving anything back. That is the
problem that Jeremy sees and that you ignore. If Codeweavers release their code
under LGPL and the main WINE tree would be BSD, all would be fine: Companies 
could not use Codeweavers code in close-source projects, while non-profit 
development on the Codeweavers tree would be fine. This is my last mail about 
the topic, because I stated everything twice already.

Regards,
-- 
Boris Buegling  <boris at icculus.org>

You can't take damsel here now.