Re: Funding software development?

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Deven T. Corzine wrote:

> >  * Gavriel State - TransGaming DirectX Release
> >    (You said you did not know which promise they made, now you know)
> >    http://www.winehq.com/hypermail/wine-devel/2000/12/0358.html
> 
> Okay, I see that they promised:
> 
> * Release of Direct3D code under the AFPL -- was this done?

Yes, there's a public CVS; however, Alexandre doesn't seem to want this,
as he thinks having non-free sources available removes the incentive for
the creation of free sources, so don't put too much weight on this point.

> * Release of DirectDraw code under the Wine (X11) license -- was this done?

Yes.

> * Release of all Wine code after a "set number of users" have subscribed to 
>   their service.
> 
> If they didn't do either of the first two releases as described, then they 
> have clearly broken their promise.  If they followed through on just the 
> first two, but not the last part, from the above message alone, I can't say 
> that they've broken a promise.  That's because they've got a loophole in 
> the "set number" -- they didn't specify the number.  (Did they specify a 
> particular number later?)

The number was 20000.

> It's possible that they intend to follow through on the third part of this 
> promise, and they never reached their initial goal for subscriptions.  This 
> would be legitimate, but they ought to make it possible for the community 
> to verify this.

I suppose.

> If they want any trust from the community on follow-through, here what they 
> should have done:
> 
> * Make a public commitment as to the EXACT minimum number of subscriptions 
>   are necessary (1) for the initial release and (2) for ongoing release of 
>   later patches.

Both numbers are 20000.

> * Keep open books on the number of subscriptions, so anyone can check at 
>   any time how near or far from the mark the number is.  (Possibly list the 
>   individual subscribers for verification, but this might have implications 
>   for subscriber privacy.)

Admittedly, the number of subscriptions was kept secret while it was
"depressingly" low, probably because of the negative PR effect publishing
this low number would have. But the president revealed the number a couple
of months ago as around 3000. The numbers are steadily growing now, but
it's still basically in that ballpark.

> * Follow through with the code release when the threshold is met.

The threshold is still a long way off. The LGPL didn't exactly increase
the incentive for continuing to submit code to Wine before reaching the
subscription goals, although such releases will still happen sometimes.