Transgaming's promises mean little (was: Re: bias...)

On Tue, 2002-06-04 at 17:50, Sean C. Farley 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
> 
> >From that post, I gather they have followed their promise.  I do not see
> what to complain about.  The code was released under the Aladdin Free
> Public License.  I assume they have not reached their set number since
> they have not release the code under the X11 license.
> 

Nor are they ever likely to do so, despite their promises! 

In addition to the promise made to the wine developers to eventually release the Direct3D work, Transgaming also made the following public commitment: 

http://web.archive.org/web/20011123120809/http://www.transgaming.com/businessmodel.php

"One aspect of TransGaming's model is based on the Street Performer Protocol. We are licensing some of our 3D code under the Aladdin Free Public License (AFPL), which restricts certain forms of commercial redistribution. Users may freely download and use the software, but will be encouraged to subscribe to our subscription service. We will not release that code under a less restrictive license (such as the Wine license) unless and until we have a paying subscriber base of at least 20,000 users. This means that our work will not be fully incorporated into the main Wine source base before that point..." 

Transgaming then proceeded to take subscriptions to WineX based on this promise to eventually return the work to the wine community.  At least some of their customers took out subscriptions because they felt they were helping to fund the development of free software for the wine project.  See: 

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33287&cid=3596846
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33287&cid=3598924

Now it appears that Transgaming has reneged.  The promises that were made to both wine developers and their customers have quietly disappeared from their website: 

http://www.transgaming.com/businessmodel.php

Now all we have is: 

"Our business objectives are quite simple: work with the most successful game developers in the world towards multi-platform releases of the most popular games; enrich the gaming experience for end-users by providing games on those platforms they wish to play." 

Evidently their business objectives no longer include contributing to Wine (or Rewind, for that matter), as neither are mentioned here. 

Now, it is perfectly understandable for Transgaming to have not released the code until their subscription target was met (I assume it hasn't been, but of course only Transgaming would know that for certain).  It was also reasonable for the wine developers to change the license for their software once they realised that these unfulfilled promises were harming the project. 

However -- nothing excuses Transgaming from this act of bad faith towards their subscribers!  If Transgaming had ever been sincere in its intention to return the Direct3D work to the wine project, there was no reason to retract this promise.  After all, they don't have to fulfill it unless they reach their subcription target, at which point presumably their development costs would have been paid for.  An honest approach would be to have simply acknowledged that they were never likely to reach 20,000 subscribers, and then either released the code anyway as an act of goodwill, or suggest that although they were still prepared to keep the promise, the code would probably never be actually released due to a chronically insufficient number of supporters.  At that point, the wine developers could have decided how to proceed, weighing the risk of a possibly wasteful reimplementation the Direct3D work by themselves against the small chance that Transgaming would eventually release t!

heir code under the (old) wine license. 

Instead we now have this surreptitious retraction of their promise to the community of developers and users :-(  Personally, I do not believe that Transgaming ever had any intention of releasing the Direct3D code -- I think it was merely a marketing ploy designed to attract additional subscribers, and possibly also to discourage competitive independent development in these areas within the wine project.  Whether by accident or by design, these policies have succeeded remarkably well in ensuring that wine is not a competitive alternative platform for hosting Windows games. 

Nor is this the only example of Transgaming's insincerity -- 

Transgaming provides some of their game-related code under the AFPL.  This is not a free software license, but it does allow non-commercial redistribution in source or binary form, among other things.  When software is released under a license, this is also a "promise" of sorts, since it assures the user that there will be no copyright infringement if the uses of the code fall within the permissions stated in the license.

Unfortunately, it appears that Transgaming has no intention of allowing anyone to make use of their software under the AFPL -- the rights that were granted are illusory, and will be taken away as soon as someone tries to exercise them.  See:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/debian-devel-200205/msg02823.html

Note that the code that was to be packaged is *not* the same as WineX -- it provides only a subset of the functionality of Transgaming's proprietary version anyway (and no support or testing).  Despite this, Transgaming has clearly stated that if anyone makes use of this "lite" version of winex, they will probably change the license to make that impossible.  See:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/debian-devel-200205/msg02469.html

As Thomas Bushnell points out, Transgaming's distribution terms are a scam -- if any group like Debian tries to make it convenient for their users to make use of the AFPLed code, Transgaming will probably change the license to prevent it.  Since there is no long-term prospect of being able to release updated packages of the code due to this threat, it's not worth anyone's time and effort to bother doing so in the first place.  Needless to say, Debian's developers decided not to bother packaging the AFPLed code, and Transgaming got what it wanted without changing the license.  This allows Transgaming to persist in maintaining the illusion that they are some type of "open source" company, while being wholly proprietary in practice.

Finally, there was Transgaming's decision to fork the wine project and create "rewind" (http://rewind.sourceforge.net).  Although they (along with many of the loudest non-contributors who post here) claim to support an X-licensed branch, this claim is not backed up by any significant contributions of code.  Rewind was established over two months ago, yet most (if not all) of the code contributed so far appears to have been lifted from the wine-patches mailing list.

I agree with Dmitry Timoshkov when he wrote:

"Transgaming wants to include patches made for LGPL'ed Wine into WineX and as an intermediate step they incorporate those patches into ReWind (just to create an illusion that they support an X11 licensed Wine tree)."

The evidence so far supports this interpretation.  It should be obvious by now that "rewind" is not a free software *project* in any meaningful sense -- it has no independent community of developers, and no commercial support; it has no mailing lists or other fora for discussion.  Instead, it consists of two Transgaming employees whose "contribution" consists of applying other people's patches to the old X-licensed codebase (and from there into WineX).  In short, it's merely a temporary code repository that is used by Transgaming to indirectly capture patches flowing in one direction from the wine project into Transgaming's proprietary software hoard.  If the people who claim to support the use of the X license had devoted as much effort contributing code to rewind as they contribute in windy rhetoric to the wine-license mailing list, rewind's codebase might actually have some independent value.  However, I won't hold my breath waiting to see that happen. It seems that the X!

 license is always the best way to license code -- as long as it's some other sucker who is doing it!

Indeed, it should be obvious by now that rewind will never have any independent value, since it will always provide a (probably broken) subset of the functionality available in either LGPLed Wine or Transgaming's proprietary WineX.  The nature of the X license practically guarantees this.  Therefore, it would be simpler for all concerned to simply dispense with this charade -- wine developers who wish to subsidise Transgaming's development costs can simply mail their patches to Transgaming, or authorise them to poach them off the wine-patches mailing list (assuming they are not derived from any LGPLed code...).  Ove Kaaven and other Transgaming employees could then apply them directly to the WineX tree.  I'm sure that Transgaming's developer resources must be limited, and it seems like a foolish waste of time for Ove and other Transgaming staff to have to maintain two trees, when one of these has no use value -- either to Transgaming, the Wine project, or anyone else.

***

Everyone must look at the available evidence and draw their own conclusions about Transgaming's ultimate goals and motivations.  For my part, I see Transgaming's relationship to the Wine project (and their customers, in some cases) as being manipulative and exploitive, and only becoming more so over time.  The above examples of Transgaming's behavior, as well as their unwillingness to share generally useful improvements (DCOM, InstallShield, etc.) with the wine project (outside their core competence in the area of game support, which is to be expected) lead me to believe that they regard wine as a *competitor*, rather than a collaborating partner.  If this is true,then the benefits of any ongoing relationship with Transgaming will continue to be one-sided.

I recommend that unless Transgaming is willing to publicly commit to _using_ and making meaningful contributions to the LGPLed codebase, that wine developers should cut them loose (ie: not dual-license patches to wine).  They can then develop their proprietary fork independently, and wine developers will be able to make rational, informed decisions about what areas of wine to contribute to, knowing that nothing will ever be coming back from Transgaming.

%0

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