Games - An old new Idea

[Igor Izyumin]

On Monday 04 November 2002 04:31 pm, Dustin Navea wrote:
> --- Lionel Ulmer <lionel.ulmer at free.fr> wrote:
> > > Stupid question that will probably be ripped to shreds but what about
> > > if
> >
> > we
> >
> > > release the binaries with copy protection support but not put it in CVS
> > > (kinda like transgaming, except that users dont have to pay for the
> >
> > binaries)?
> >
> > It's illegal according to the LGPL as far as I know (except, of course,
> > if all (c) holders accept to do an exception to the rule :-) ).
> >
> > I may be wrong though :-)
>
> From my understanding of the LGPL, only offspring have to recontribute to
> the main branch (i.e. transgaming would have to recontribute any changes to
> winehq if they used any of winehq's code, post license switch, unless
> alexandre agreed to allow them not to)  I dont know of any place where it
> says that the main branch cant put one thing into binary releases that they
> leave off of the source release...
>
> Of course, I could be wrong as well... <g>

First, I'm not a lawyer, so I might be wrong...

The _copyright owner_ can do whatever he or she pleases with their code.  In 
the case of wine, there are hundreds of copyright owners (people who at some 
point wrote code) which have licensed their code to the main tree under the 
LGPL.  The main project is not a legal entity by itself, I believe - it's 
just a sum of the individual contributions.

To use the code in a way that the original license does not permit (and the 
LGPL does not permit this), you would have to locate and persuade every 
single contributor to agree on the changes.  Good luck getting that one done.
-- 
-- Igor