Jeremy White wrote: > ... > However, with some recent events I cannot disclose, it is clear to me > that the opportunity for Wine to be used in a proprietary product is > too tempting and has caused some harm to the Wine project. Based on > experience, I feel strongly that the potential for harm is great > enough that CodeWeavers needs to take two actions. First, we would > like to release all new code we develop under an LGPL style license. > Second, I would like to open another call for a license change and > thereby strongly add my voice to Alexandre's. > > Thus, I would like to call for a change in the Wine license. I think > we all agreed that the LGPL formed the basis for a good 'alternate' > license strategy. Eben Moglen, the counsel for the FSF, has kindly > offered to help review licensing strategies for Wine. The goal is to > attempt to secure some form of Copyleft protection for Wine while > still permitting proprietary software to link and bind with Wine. > ... > Finally, in closing, I wanted to summarize our position. We plan to > release our future work under an xGPL style license, and we would like > the rest of the Wine community to join us. If the bulk of the > community wants to stick with the current license, then we will > probably end up making a separate CVS development tree. Anyone would > be free to use our work from that tree, under the xGPL-style license > terms the FSF's lawyers recommend.
It's about time. Putting Wine under the xGPL is the best way I can think of to ensure its future. The xGPL makes it possible for competitors to cooperate for their common good - which is pretty amazing. As Bob Young said at the formation of the Gnome Foundation (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,s2080853,00.html): "There's been a fundamental problem of getting industry consortium to work together... But we don't have a single corporate lawyer in the room. We haven't signed a single licence among any of us... With the GPL, we have eliminated the need for trust." See also http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/random-bits/2001-June/000589.html - Dan
