Re: Again: list of advantages of the xGPL

On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Roland wrote:

> >Are you sure?  Wine seems pretty vital and active.  Freshmeat ranks it with
> >a "vitality" score of 32.08% right now.  Sure, the Linux kernel ranks at
> >81.50%, but Apache only ranks at 2.44%.  No, I don't think Wine needs the
> >protections of the GPL as much as many less active projects do...
> 
> Well, the discussions here about the Direct3D stuff prove you wrong...

The Direct3D stuff is anecdotal evidence, and insufficient to prove the 
general case.  It may be cause for concern, but it's hardly solid proof.

> >Today, that's very true.  But the GPL's creeping dominance is inexorable.
> >Even Microsoft could make a business mistake and go out of business, but
> >the GPL codebase will just keep growing, even if it leaves a trail of
> >broken companies behind it.
> 
> I imagine the GPL like a huge, hideous, creepy mass, moving and growing 
> slowly but steadily. Isn't it scary? :))

Only if it gets out of hand!

> > > If there is a large userbase probably one of those users will finally
> > > implement the feature himself. Its all statistics. In a large userbase
> > > there will probably be
> > > a) several programmers
> > > b) of whom at least one will be willing to implement that feature
> >
> >That's a convenient theory, but a flawed one.  The history of free software
> >has shown little interest by the programmers to apply the ease-of-use sort
> >of polish that unsophisticated end users crave -- and that's not surprising
> >since the programmers don't find the unpolished version difficult to use.
> 
> Well, but we are seeing Linux becoming more and more of a polish...see also 
> OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc...

You can't count OpenOffice and Mozilla.  People are being paid to polish 
those products, and that money is coming from businesses taking calculated 
risks to try to compete with Microsoft.  To a certain degree, some of the 
general Linux polish by Red Hat and others falls into the same category.

How often do you see highly-polished end-user code coming from volunteer 
developers who aren't paid for their efforts and don't care about the 
polish for their own use?  I'm not saying it never happens, but it's not 
terribly common either.

> Well, in my case I'm just the guy who happens to be the user and 
> programmer. My job here is to code around things like that among 
> others...to make them work.

Luckily, your company can afford to pay you to do that.  What if they 
didn't have enough resources to afford your services?  Then where would 
they be, open source or not?

> > > >However, my question was about incentives to FUND new xGPL development.
> >
> >Funny, you didn't bother to answer this one.  You just turned a blind eye
> >to the core question here.
>
> I thought the answer was already given: there will be an incentive to 
> create a new product when there is demand for it. It's the same law that 
> applies to closed source.

No, you suggested that some user/programmer will conveniently write it for 
everyone.  While that can happen, if nobody steps up to do it, the only way 
it's otherwise likely to happen is if someone is paid to do it.  In order 
to pay someone to do it, the money has to come from somewhere.

Where will the money come from to pay for end-user coding where there's 
definite but diffuse demand?  You haven't addressed this question yet.

> > > >Certainly.  Of course, don't be surprised when another company looks at
> > > >what happened with Transgaming and decides that the "Street Performer
> > > >Protocol" is unworkable -- and sticks with closed software instead...
> > >
> > > And thats also what happened to the WINE project. People realized that
> > > the BSDL didnt work as expected, and they decided to switch to the LGPL.
> >
> >It's true that the BSDL didn't force TG to release their code.  But the
> >"harm" suffered thereby seems somewhat hypothetical in nature.  Maybe it
> >truly exists, or maybe it was an illusion that was perceived as reality.
> >How can we be certain either way?
> 
> good point...

And this is why the Direct3D stuff, even if worrying as an anecdote, isn't 
really proof that Wine _needed_ the *GPL protections, although it may make 
the Wine developers feel better about the situation...

Deven