Wine license change

[J.Brown (Ender/Amigo)]

Okay. Let's look at this.

The main objections seem to be based off two debatible premises:

 a) LGPL will stop commercial development
 b) FSF

I personally do not agree with most of RMS's arguments, but I DO
implicitly agree with the GPL philosophy. There are several reasons I
agree with it, which I will list below. Please, just because you hate the
FSF, there is no reason not to accept the license they use. Using the LGPL
does not give the FSF -any- control over Wine. Even less if you do not
give a "or any later version" clause.

Also the fact that LGPL will stop commercial development is a false
assumption. WINE is the main application. Wine uses several LGPL
libraries. If the main Wine executable is still BSD licensed, you can
replace the LGPLed libraries with your commercial version. Etc, etc.

John Carmack made an intresting point, he releases ID softwares older
releases under the GPL. Why? Because after originally releasing an engine
after a BSD-esque license, a project done some very major work to the
engine...  and then lost it in a harddrive crash. So his -main- reason for
using the GPL is to prevent work done in the community from being lost.

There are of course other points. The LGPL is the GPL without the
restrictions which prevent useful commercial use. Thus RMS
complains it isn't real "open-source"... Neither the LGPL or GPL prevents
charging for software, but as the source is open few people would buy a
product they can compile themselves. This is true.

No license on earth will satisfy everyone. But the LGPL is not
fundementally evil. IMHO, any commercial developer that doesn't understand
the LGPL license, nor how to use it to his advantage, in my opinion has no
buisness coding on a Linux/unix platform...

Regards,        | It's always bad news in computing.. and beware
		| of anything claming to be good news - because
                | its probably a virus. - Salmon Days
        Ender   |
  (James Brown) | [Nehahra, EasyCuts, PureLS, www.QuakeSrc.org]

On Fri, 8 Feb 2002, Brett Glass wrote:

> Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2002 12:07:59 -0700
> From: Brett Glass <brett at lariat.org>
> To: wine-devel at winehq.com
> Subject: Re: Wine license change
>
> Roland (roland at netquant.com.br) writes:
>
> >To write it again we have two interests:
> >
> >1. People who want to make money selling WINE or derivates == anti xGPL
> >2. People who contribute for free or have another business model than the
> >above == pro xGPL
>
> There are a few more categories who would not want the (L)GPL:
>
> 3. Professional programmers who would like to fix bugs (if the
> code is (L)GPLed, they can't without becoming "tainted" by
> having read the code);
>
> 4. Anyone who objects to viral licenses or the FSF's misleading
> propaganda;
>
> 5. Users who want to be able to buy a commercial product with
> professional support, especially good integration, and possibly
> enhanced features;
>
> 6. Anyone who does not want to see WINE fork into truly free and
> FSF-licensed versions; and
>
> 7. Anyone who cares, on principle, about software freedom and
> choice.
>
> --Brett Glass
>
>
>
>