Wine license change

[Brett Glass]

At 05:33 PM 2/13/2002, Anthony Taylor wrote:

>Currently, there are only a few software companies making huge amounts
>of money.  It's not *just* Free Software-based software companies. 
>Cygnus had problems making money; so is Borland.  

Ironically, Borland is having trouble because it made the mistake of
targeting the Linux platform. Many Linux users have "moral" objections
to paying for a product, and so either have not bought Kylix or have
pirated it. At the February 2000 LinuxWorld, Bradley Kuhn of the FSF
disparaged Borland's products in front of a large audience. He told
the group that Borland's products are "a proprietary threat to freedom," 
and urged developers in the audience to write a GPLed clone and not to 
buy Borland's tools.

>Red Hat isn't terribly profitable yet; 

It has lost millions over its lifetime. I do not believe it will
make it in the end.

>Be Corp. went belly-up.

Interestingly, Be failed because it was squeezed between Microsoft on
the one hand and Linux on the other. Microsoft damaged Be by precluding
pre-installs, but Linux did even more damage by undercutting BeOS on
price. 

>Fact is, it's hard for a
>start-up to make money at all in the current software industry.  It's
>not the licensing model that is the problem; it's the industry itself.

Licensing models matter a great deal.

>Yes, it's easier to make money when you induce artificial scarcity in a
>product.

Insisting that you be paid before giving someone your work is not
"inducing artificial scarcity" any more than my refusal to do, say,
unpaid plumbing work is doing so. It's simply necessary to earn a 
living! ;-)

--Brett