Commercial support

[Troy Rollo]

> On 5/7/05, Shachar Shemesh <wine-devel at shemesh.biz> wrote:
> > I really suggest we adhere to KISS - Keep It Simple.

On Sat, 7 May 2005 22:17, Tom Wickline wrote:
> And have nothing in place if a rouge company fails to adhear to the
> LGPL!!!!!!!

Actually, rouge companies quite like the LGPL because it fits with their 
philosophy, although they tend to prefer the GPL, those pinkos.

Rogue companies on the other hand...

In any case, the difficulty you have here is that anything you do that sets a 
barrier against the bad guys is also likely to set a barrier against the good 
guys. 

One of the reasons (if not the major reason) I avoid Microsoft products now is 
because of their increasingly intrusive approach to license enforcement. All 
my Microsoft stuff was fully paid for, but I wasn't interested in being 
treated like a crook or even a potential crook at the outset, nor was I 
interested in jumping through increasingly annoying hoops. In fact if they 
hadn't gotten so damned annoying about it I probably still wouldn't be using 
Linux or contributing to WINE.

If you ask the question "how can the WINE project stop some random company X 
from exploiting the situation unfairly", then perhaps hoops is a good idea.

If you ask the question "how can the WINE project get the maximum possible 
benefit from this", then hoops may not be a good idea, since the WINE 
project's interests lie in the largest possible pool of suppliers of 
services.

You may get some who exploit or abuse the situation without giving back, but 
the goal is (IMO) not minimisation of exploitation, but maximisation of 
benefit. These are not necessarily complimentary goals - often you have to 
wear some amount of exploitation by others to get the maximum benefit for 
yourself.