On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 10:03:39AM -0800, John Allen wrote: > My favorites, > > Cedega, if you want to play newer windows games in Linux, but does cost > $15.95. - http://www.transgaming.com/
Some of us have a moral objection to ANYTHING from transgaming. While I was affilitated with Debian, you could get winex for a fee, or you could download their CVS and try to make it work yourself. The for-a-fee version was generally better and had stuff you couldn't get in CVS, but the CVS winex was still far better than wine for many programs. This being the case, someone from Debian decided he should make a package out of it, since the license allowed it. Transgaming responded that if Debian were to do so, they would change the license to expressly forbid Debian to distribute winex. So wait, this is free software, as long as you don't try to use it as such? And if you do, they'll change the license to forbid you, specifically, from doing so? Transgaming's people said, basically, yes. The license allows people to compile and distribute the CVS version, but it was never intended to allow widespread distribution. If anyone tried to do that, they would be banned from doing so via license exclusions. I should also point out that Transgaming is populated mostly by former Corel employees working on Corel Linux (a Debian derivative that put you on the network before logging you in as root and inviting you to set a root passwd or not, as you preferred..) Those who used Debian at that point in history may remember that Corel initially tried to release this distribution without source code. When Debian protested, they were told that Corel was working on it. Internally, Corel was discussing how there was no way a bunch of zealots would ever be able to muster a lawsuit and how the GNU GPL was essentially unenforcable. Word from management was to be careful not to be caught infringing the GNU GPL for PR reasons, but not to worry about it too closely because it was the company's position that the GNU GPL could not be enforced. A friend of mine, then working for Corel, posted these memos to Bruce Perens' technocrat website. She was summarily dismissed for leaking confidential information, and Corel denied that they ever held such a position. The Corel Linux department never had much respect for free software development, and this tradition continues at Transgaming. _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
