Re: WineX and the AFPL

> Let's suppose for a moment that *all* of your code for crossver office was fully
> LGPL and that it's code was in the main wine tree, including the "dirty hacks we
> don't want to put there". How would you feel if another company took all the
> work you've done and decided to one-up you and put you out of business in just a
> bit because they had huge amounts of money and with marketing power alone they
> crushed you business wise while making very few actual contributions to the
> code...

First, let me repeat:  all of our Wine code, dirty laundry and all, is
published on our web site.  I'll address the further question
below.

> 
> I guess the reason I'm asking is, suppose Transgaming puts *all* of their code
> (minus the proprietary safedisc code, which they obviously cannot) into the wine
> tree. What reason do people now have to subscribe to Transgaming? Not many. Now,
> any wine based company can say 'we have gaming support!' without lifting a
> finger. In my opinion, it's actually kinda nice right now, if you want to run
> productivity apps, you purchase crossover stuff. If you want to game, you
> purchase transgaming stuff. But once all the code's in one place, what reason do
> I have to support any one specific company? And don't tell me goodwill either,
> in the end users don't give a $$$$ about goodwill. All they care about is that
> they can run X program. (Now I'm a little different, but I'm not the average
> user.)
> 
> Or how would you feel if the complete source of crossover office was compiled as
> a binary debian package and put in contrib so any debian user could just apt-get
> install crossover-office? How many sales do you think the codeweavers people
> would lose? I'm betting quite a bit. So while all of this lovely "freedom" stuff
> sounds lovely. I'm still trying to see the real financial model in all of this,
> maybe you can enlighten commercial software developers as to how they can make
> a living writing software, if the software effectively doesn't cost anything?

I expect that some day, relatively soon, there will be a version of Wine
that does 98% of what CrossOver Office does now, and that people will be
able to simply do an apt-get wine, and not feel the need to pay 
us a dime.

I hope, when that day comes, that CrossOver Office will do 150% of what
it does now, so people will continue to be happy to buy it from us.
I further hope that the people who bought CrossOver Office 1.0 will
be so pleased with its capabilities that they'll tell their friends
to buy it, because it has proven invaluable to them and that the support
is fantastic.  I also hope that many large organizations will choose
to use a well supported version of Wine rather than use the free
version.

These are great hopes, but I also share your opinion on the
motives of end users - buying for good will happens, but not
enough to sustain a company.

So how does that make me feel?  Terrified!  <grin> 
The Linux desktop market has to grow very fast in order
for me to keep my company afloat.  

But I chose to base my company on an open source project.  
That's *my* problem, and it's not appropriate for the Wine
project to suffer because of it.

Yes, you can argue that it helps a project to have corporate
sponsors, because they afford to pay people to work on 
things full time.  Of course, that is only true if
the corporate sponsor truly helps the project move
forward.

Finally, while I'm on my soapbox, there are several accusations
that have been made (either here or on Slashdot) that
really bother me.

First, I resent the implications that CodeWeavers somehow
forced a switch to the LGPL.  Please understand that
this is something that Alexandre, as Wine maintainer, felt
was important to do.  If Alexandre had acted on my
behest in this matter, Wine would have been LGPL
a long time ago  (and boxed comments would be mandatory
<grin>).  Further, Alexandre was very uncomfortable
taking this action until he felt that a majority
of the non CodeWeavers Wine developers were behind
the switch as well.

Second, I resent the portrayal of our actions as
being intended to harm Transgaming.  I have known
Gav personally for a long time, and I wish both
he and Transgaming the best. 

I guess what I'm saying is that I still feel the
switch to LGPL is better, *despite* the distress
it has caused Transgaming; everyone seems to be
implying that I advocate for the LGPL
*because* of the harm it does to Transgaming - and
that's the part I resent.

Cheers,

Jeremy