Wine license change

Dave Jones dajones at purdue.edu
Thu Feb 7 12:12:08 CST 2002


I like the LGPL and all, but I think converting to this license will hurt
greatly the current projects such as Lindows and Transgaming and, in
proxy, hurt wine.  Mindshare is important, and to see Wine in succesful
projects helps people to realize it as a viable product.

I don't think anybody is turned off from developing wine with its current
license, but the change would turn away many I'm sure. Some people get
thier paychecks working on Wine (Transgaming). I think TG has done great
things for Wine, and I wouldn't have supported them had they not promised
to release thier changes back to the main wine tree.

Lindows, however, can eat it. By not intending release thier changes and
to sieze the Wine code to make it thiers for profit, I cannot, and will
not support them.

What I would like to see is a new licence that sees that all forks move
back into the main wine tree at regular intervals, say, after 6 months or
a year while still allowing companies to do what they will with the code.

We aren't looking to stifle innovation here, I like the TG subscription
model, and I would probably contribute in that kind of fashion to many
projects, but there must be an incentive to do so (like TG's DirectX work)

I am against a change to LGPL, but I realize the current license is
allowing lindows to stand on the shoulders of giants and wearing a long
overcoat to cover it up, and that is just wrong.

Dave Jones - dajones at purdue.edu







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