Commercial support

[Shachar Shemesh]

Tom Wickline wrote:

>At any rate you didn't answer the question of what will happen if wine
>is ever hijacked. But I guess it could happen even without this
>referral page, if it does ever happen lets just hope its not by
>someone listed here.
>  
>
This is actually a very good point in favor of not charging money at 
all. If you charge money, you create obligation. That's the way the 
legal system works. If you do not, you can easily delist any known LGPL 
offender.

Having said that, I think the focus on code contributions to wine may be 
exaggerated. Looking from what we know right now, there are just three 
companies that have the capability to change wine to fit a specific 
client. Of these three, CodeWeavers is the only one who is doing any 
significant work on wine on a regular basis. They may be some freelance 
work going on as well, but it seems to me most of it is for Code Weavers 
anyways.

>> 
>> But of course, $ 100 per year is a nice price, but than everybody can.....
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Yea a nice referral for only $8.00 a month... hold on I just read
>Brian's mail and now the cost has just went to $0.00 sign up now at
>this everyday low price folks..
>  
>
Then again, it seems we have heard on this thread alone of three 
different companies that either package wine or play with it's 
deployment. As we learned at wineconf, not having these companies listed 
is a major hurdle for commercial Wine adoption, which is where money for 
more wine improvement ultimately comes from. This does tell us that 
worrying about LGPL violation should not be too serious. It seems that 
most commercial wine deployers don't mess with the code anyways.

Now, you might say that I'm biased because I have an interest. That 
would certainly be true. After all, if David's company is listed, and 
they get much more business then they do today, as there are only three 
companies that can provide second tier support, I obviously stand to 
win. The thing is, that so does WineHQ. I don't think I have to convince 
anyone that I give back what I do (and sometimes fight Alexandre 
ferociously about getting it included), and so does Dimi. As for 
CodeWeavers, well, I don't think anyone involved with Wine can raise 
anything against them.

So, ultimately, we ALL get to win from getting more money into Wine, and 
charging an amount that will actually allow companies to get listed 
(and, yes, between zero and 100$/yr, zero is more flexibile to us in 
getting violators delisted without mucking with the legal system).

If that doesn't convince you, then try this for size. If we do charge 
10K/yr, Lingnu will not be listed there. It's simply not worth it for 
me. If ANYONE is going to be listed there, then, it will be some huge 
company, with very little actual Wine involvement. Being as it is that 
Wine would like the commercial vendors listed too, I think that's a 
lose-lose. Don't you? Or do you really think that Lingnu is going to 
hold back code from Wine?

>To bad this project will never have sponsoring like blender3d..
>
>http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Sponsoring_prospectus.58.0.html
>  
>
As far as I know, blender was sponsored by it's clients, not by the 
people who sold services for it. That is what, I believe, most free 
software will eventually gravitate towards. Wine, however, is not there 
yet. In fact, many wine hackers hardly even run wine.

>Tom
>  
>
          Shachar

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd.
Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html