RE: Wine versions + future

Patrik Stridvall <[email protected]> wrote:
 
> > (see what happenned to projects like Plex86 that almost died due
> > to the removal of Mandrake's sponsorship).
> Since Plex86 is a highly complex project that only a few people
> like Ulrich Weigand have the abillity to make useful contributions
> to that is not very suprising.
> 
> In short. Bad example.

well, maybe for the case he was trying to make - I think he's drawing
the wrong conclusion. One could point to it as an example of what can
happen to a highly vertical LGPL app that has a major corporate sponsor
(sound like wine?).
 
> > Well, I think it is rather to take a stance. This means that,
> > for example, one can start working on Direct3D / DCOM in the WineHQ tree
> > without fearing a patch exchange in the following days invalidating all the
> > work one does.
> Well, actually, there is no security even at that point.
> Transgaming can release whatever they what under the LPGL
> or the X11 license... Of course Alexandre can always say
> no regardless. However that has nothing to do with the
> license of Wine.

It does in this respect: there is ZERO incentive for Transgaming to provide
LGPL patches, as they cannot incorporate any fixes to their contributions
back into their product.  Gav should probably release *some* of what was promised
(presuming that the breakeven requirements have been met) to the Rewind tree, just
as a show of good faith (and not that his initial intent was to perpetually withhold
the source).

> Beside speaking about trading you are aware that the more you do
> on something that Transgaming have done the larger will their
> willingness to trade be since before long their work will be
> less useful to trade. See it like getting their larger work
> for your smaller work + something else.

As I wrote before, I find it amusing that the *GPL camp is the one most
against "trading", as it is the core tenet of the license (or at least,
so it claims)
 
> > of people ? I.e. are you part of the Linux camp of
> > pragmatists or of the Stallman camp of idealists :-)
> I'm a CYNICAL pragmatist. I mistrust the idealists, however not
> so much their goals as their naive belief that their means will
> accieve their goals.

here, here! :)
 
> Concretely in the Wine case I mean that while I understand and in
> part agree with the goals of the LGPL camp I very much mistrust
> and disagree with the means (the LGPL + FUD about what the LGPL
> really means) to accieve the goals.

exactly.  I'm willing to bet that if you actually polled the base,
a much better license could be chosen that addresses the important
goals.  I think 99% of developers would think it's legal to make
a GPL Photoshop plugin.
 
> No personal offense but:
> In the concrete case of Wine I guess you could say that you and
> Marcus was "sacrificed" to accieve a greater goal, that is to increase
> the popularity of Linux as a gaming platform.
> 
> You can of course disagree with the morality of this especially
> if you are in the idealists camp being a victim and all.
> However in any case what Transgaming did was completly legal.

Not only is it LEGAL, but is not wrong ethically or otherwise.
Anyone who says they 'stole' code just shows they don't know what
they are talking about.

> > Anyway, as a developper of Wine (as I almost never use Wine
> > to run programs :-) ) I am 100 % in the idealist camp.
> Actually I don't run applications under Wine that much either since
> I have multiple computers. However it would be nice to get rid of
> the Windows computer. Perhaps one day... before hell freezes. :-)
 
Don't run apps in wine either, as it is very broken for solaris right now. :(

-r