Wine license change

[Brett Glass]

At 08:11 AM 2/9/2002, J.Brown (Ender/Amigo) wrote:

>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.

He really should take the time to back up his drives. ;-) But, assuming
that he wishes to use this rather unusual backup mechanism, why would the 
GPL be any better at this than a BSD-style license? 

>There are of course other points. The LGPL is the GPL without the
>restrictions which prevent useful commercial use. 

Alas, this is not true. The latest version of the LGPL -- which
RMS dubs the "Lesser GPL" -- imposes many restrictions which
make commercial use difficult if not impossible. For example, it
requires that software including the library be provided not
just as a finished product but as a series of object files which
can be lined with a newer version of the library. Not only is
this a maintenance and logistics nightmare; because it exposes
the symbol tables, it makes reverse engineering of the code
trivial. This is by design.

--Brett Glass