Re: WineX and the AFPL

On Thu, 6 Jun 2002, Roland wrote:

> but the point is, Alexandre thinks that trading code, although giving a 
> short time advantage will be disastrous in the long run. IMHO his reasoning 
> is correct.

I don't know that trading code is necessarily so disastrous in the long 
run.  Has any other project tried it?  Is there any precedent either way?

Whether or not trading patches is damaging, clearly the overall situation 
has been.  I suspect that may be as much the effect of the tension as their 
lack of sharing, and the mismatch between expectations and reality.  Would 
it work out better if everyone got along and had expectations that matched 
reality, whether or not code trades occur?

> Because he wants to make the amount of LGPL - ONLY code as big as 
> possible. As a consequence many companies will start using the LGPL
> codebase and improve it. Now if the X11 tree was as big as the LGPL, most 
> companies would prefer to work with the X11 tree, got it? Thats why he 
> doesn't want the X11 tree to grow too much -> no code trading. Makes sense...

I'm not sure it's necessary to impede the X11 fork just to entire companies 
to adopt the LGPL fork.  After all, if the volunteers focus mainly on the 
LGPL tree, that's a big incentive right there -- those volunteers represent 
free labor to any company who benefits from their efforts.

Besides, if the goal is to differentiate the trees, one could accomplish 
that by demanding that they give you more than you give them in return -- 
allow code trading, but negotiate so the LGPL tree always gets the benefit 
of the trade.  This way, the more trades that happen, the more the LGPL 
tree is differentiated.  Is it a problem if the competition gets better, if 
your project gets even better?

Deven