Re: Funding software development?

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Ove Kaaven wrote:

> > Should I assume it was incorporated into the standard Wine codebase, then?
> 
> It was. Look at some of the copyrights on the dlls/ddraw code...

Good enough.

> > > The number was 20000.
> > 
> > That's good to know.  When was this first stated publicly?
> 
> When (or before?) the transgaming website was launched, I think. Not sure.

That's official enough.

> I work there, but my statements are not official, no, and I'm not part of
> the decision-making process there so many of my statements about why
> transgaming has acted the way it does are guesses, but I can certainly say
> that taking wine's hard work and never contributing anything back has
> never even been considered an option, no matter what the LGPL trolls say
> on this list.

I think people are jumping to conclusions because "after all this time" 
there's still too little coming back.  Of course, if there's only 3,000 of 
the 20,000 goal, that shouldn't really be a surprise, should it?

> > Did he make an official statement about this number in the past?
> 
> It's been on the website from the start, at least.

Well, as someone else pointed out, it WAS on the website:

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

However, it no longer is, at least in the same place:

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

Some people seem to be interpreting this change as a retraction; can you 
ask Gavriel to clarify (on the website) whether the promise still stands?

> > This is just a thought.  But if Transgaming did this, they might regain 
> > some of the trust that seems to have been lost after the time period for 
> > the benefit of the doubt evidently expired for some people...
> 
> We'll see what the management decides.

Well, I hope they'll consider the notion.  It might help rebuild trust.

> > I'm assuming that if and when the subscription goals are met, Transgaming 
> > would release the code for use under X11 and LGPL licenses, both?  It seems 
> > valid, in principle.
> 
> Yeah, that's the idea.

I don't see the problem, in principle.  In practice, people seem to get 
more and more suspicious, the longer it takes.  That's unfortunate...

Deven