Re: GPL vs. sweatshops (was Re: Bias)

On 12 Jun 2002, Alexandre Julliard wrote:

> "Deven T. Corzine" <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> > Would you have any objections to Transgaming's business model if they had 
> > their 20,000+ subscribers and was releasing their code under the X11 and/or 
> > LGPL license?  Is it only because their plan failed that you object to it?
> 
> Well, from a philosophical standpoint I think the idea of a model that
> helps the project in case of success and hurts it in case of failure
> is flawed (and one of the nice properties of the *GPL licenses IMO is
> that even failures benefit the project), but from Wine's standpoint I
> would of course have no objections at all if they had reached their
> goal.

Ultimately, isn't that the risk of most startup businesses?  There's a lot 
of overhead cost in running a business, and without a critical mass of 
revenue to offset the costs, failure is always looming.

I suppose Transgaming could have released the code from day one, but that's 
going out on a limb even further than developing it, because it reduces the 
incentive for anyone to sign up.  Given how much trouble they had getting 
people to sign up as it was, would this have been wise?

Maybe their mistake was underestimating the capacity of their target market 
to support their venture, or the market's interest in their code?  They say 
they have 3,000-ish (maybe 4,000?) subscribers.  If that's most of the 
people using Wine/WineX to run Windows games, then they underestimated the 
market.  Then again, if there are well over 20,000 people playing those 
Windows games under Linux, it seems like it should have worked, especially 
if there's 20,000+ using WineX under the AFPL.

But I don't suppose anyone knows the number of people using the code for 
free, so it's hard to know if the market was too small or simply failed to 
rise for the occasion.  Certainly, from the perspective of an individual, 
it's more rational NOT to subscribe, and get the free benefit from letting 
others shoulder the burden.  Of course, therein lies the funding dilemma 
for Open Source software...

Deven