Wine license change

[Sean Farley]

On Thu, 7 Feb 2002 09:13, Steve Langasek wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 03:50:56PM +0100, Andreas Mohr wrote:
> > Seems Slashdot is fast today ;-)
>
> > They already have a thread about the proposed license change running.
>
> > One guy made an interesting suggestion:
> > a "dual license" scheme (like MySQL uses) where you switch to (L)GPL,
> > but certain companies are allowed to take code without contributing
> > everything and their arms and legs back...
>
> If that's the wish of the Wine community (as opposed to the wish of a
> group of armchair quarterbacks on Slashdot who've never written a line of
> published code), then there's no need for a license change at all.  The
> present license allows one to take the Wine code and use/redistribute it
> under the LGPL at any time.

Does it matter if they have written code for Wine or not?  I test out
and attempt to debug bugs in Wine when they show up on FreeBSD.  Let's
just say that I have not been all that successful.  :)

If not, let me say that I see no reason to change the current license.
The LGPL may push proprietary code from the Wine core, but it will just
push it into DLL's.

Remember that not everyone will contribute back.  Why should you expect
them to assuming you are not a Moonie?  Maybe they have nothing to
contribute back.  Maybe they don't want to contribute back.  Forcing
them into sharing is not sharing.

As for commercial interest, I see that Apache+modssl has done quite well
against any closed-source versions.

> The primary reason to convert the WineHQ repository to LGPL is if we want
> to ensure that other companies/individuals don't contribute less back to
> Wine than is required by the LGPL when they make modifications.  If you
> think that would be a bad thing, then vote against converting to the LGPL.

I strongly dislike coercement of any sort when it comes to open source.
I would like to vote to keep the license as is, but I am only a user and
part-time open-source developer.  It must be that armchair quarterback
in me trying to come out.  :)

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