Re: WineX and the AFPL

Alexandre Julliard <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Deven T. Corzine" <[email protected]> writes:
> > The X11 license doesn't demand that companies give back, but gives them an
> > incentive to use and improve the code.  The LGPL license demands more from
> > the companies, but reduces their incentive in the first place.  In the end,
> > which approach results in more commercial contributions to public projects?
> > I don't know, but I don't think either side is an obvious winner here.
> 
> Well, it will be very easy to test, since the Rewind fork is still
> under the X11 license, and does pretty much the same thing as Wine at
> this point. The future will tell which of the forks is attracting the
> most contributions. My bet is on Wine...

This test would only be valid if you say that you won't accept any patches
given to Rewind that was not expressly intended to be included in Wine also.
As there is no legal way to enforce this, the only reasonable way is for you,
as the wine coordinator, say that Wine will not accept any patches that
was given to the Rewind patch list.  Otherwise, the LGPL project could always
'steal' from the X11 version, thus always making the comparison worthless.
 
> > I was suggesting that they might be willing to commit to making PART of
> > their code open in future releases.  The LGPL would force them to make ALL
> > of their code available, which they're evidently unwilling or unable to do.
> Of course not, the LGPL only forces them to release the code for the
> dlls where they use LGPL code. They can use all the LGPL code we write
> without ever having to release their DirectX stuff for instance.

Unless you have a *complete* DLL separation (and even then, one can make
arguments that it still is "part of the whole"), your statement is false.
 
> > Just because he steadfastly refuses to come around to your way of thinking,
> > is that any reason why cooperation should be impossible?
> 
> Nobody said cooperation is impossible. There has been plenty of
> cooperation already, Transgaming is using a lot of our code and we are
> using a lot of theirs. Just because I don't agree to the specific
> offer Gav is making doesn't mean there won't be any cooperation at all.

What would be the point for an X11 project to cooperate with an LGPL project as
the X11 project will get *nothing* they can use back (assuming that the LGPL
camp does not relicense).  If you say 'knowledge' then the same thing could
have been said with the AFPL code from Transgaming to Wine.  Since you didn't
think that was any good, why should anyone think it is different the other
way around?
 
> > Is the real goal of Wine to replace Windows, or JUST to run games?  Think
> > about it -- if Wine gets to a point where everything BUT games works, and
> > works flawlessly, then the attention would fall on gaming again to finish
> > the job anyhow.  And if everything ELSE was flawless, we might be seeing a
> > lot more desktops converted to Linux in the first place, because everything
> > would work just as well as in Windows, except maybe games.
>
> That's not how open source development work.

Oh, I'm glad you have a PHd in Open Source Development and that all the OS
projects (Mozilla, OpenOffice, Apache, Linux kernel....) work in *exactly* 
the same way.

> We don't have a fixed number of resources that we can somehow assign
> to do tasks that we consider useful for such and such goal. If some 
> developers have fun making games work, that's what they'll work on.
> And if Transgaming's actions make it no longer fun for them (which
> is what happened for Marcus) they will no longer work on it. They 
> are not going to start working on dll separation instead, they will
> just go to the movies or do something else they enjoy instead. 
> It's a net loss for the project.

So, what are you going to do when some other entity add a feature in
a DLL?  Switch to GPL?
 
> > Looking at the big picture, I don't see harm to the Wine PROJECT.  Maybe
> > DirectX development has fizzled (for now) due to Transgaming.  So what?
> > There's plenty of other important work to be done, isn't there?  Focus on
> > that and let Transgaming do their thing.  And trade when it's advantageous.
> You didn't read what I wrote. It's clear that nothing can be done
> about DirectX at this point. I'm worried about the *other* parts of
> Wine, and about the *future*; the DirectX fiasco just serves as an
> illustration of what could happen somewhere else, and *that* is what
> I'm trying to prevent.

This is *orseshi*.  Redundancy is something that comes with open source
development.  Did ext3/reiserfs stop because IBM and SGI were coming out
with journalled FS?  How many linux distributions are there?  Did Koffice
stop because Sun was coming out with Open/Star Office?  The examples
go on and on.  If you are not going to work on something because someone
else is working on it, or has it done but you can't use it, you are in
the wrong model of development.

> > Of course not.  But I think you're jumping to conclusions to say that it's
> > harmful when that hardly seems a foregone conclusion at all.  Obviously, if
> > it's true, there's no amount of money that can justify it.  But is it true?
> I believe it is true, and there's plenty of evidence that makes this a
> reasonable conclusion I think. And since I believe that, I'm acting on
> this belief. You are free to disagree, but as long as I'm convinced
> Wine is being harmed, I'll do what I can to try to solve that problem.

I see nothing more harmful than all the time wasted in changing/arguing over
the license change and the acrimony that it has instilled in the developers
(with no let up in sight).

-r