Jeremy makes a persuasive argument for LGPL

[dschwarz at bellatlantic.net]

Well, I'm fairly convinced after reading his argument that LGPL is the
right way to go. I think it's better for the Wine project over the long
term.

For those companies who have built a business model on closed source
enhancements to Wine, there is still a way to play the game:

At some point Wine is going to improve to the point where the core code
works well enough to do almost everything we need. There will always be
room for improvement, but the action may shift to reimplementing Microsoft
applications that have important APIs (Internet Explorer, Windows Media
Player...).

I'm sure that Microsoft will change its EULAs to prohibit use of
applications such as MSIE on a Non-Microsoft OS. It has already started
doing this for some programs.

Companies could respond by selling open or closed source reimplementations
of these applications, bundled with a LGPL Wine. There will always be
plenty of ways to add value on top of the core Wine code.

Meanwhile, LGPL ensures that core code improvements will flow back to
benefit all, not just those individuals and companies that have an
altruistic bent.

Regards,

Daniel Schwarz
dschwarz at bellatlantic.net
http://www.winecentric.com
http://winecentric.com/wiki