Dr. Seuss, licensing, and WINE

[Roland]

At 11:31 AM 2/8/02 -0700, Brett Glass wrote:

>Perhaps a simple economic analysis would help to assuage those egos.
>

[SNIP]

>The (L)GPL destroys this delicately balanced symbiotic relationship by making
>it impossible for the vendor to add unique value. As a result, the scenario
>described above can't happen, and it's a lose/lose rather than a win/win. The

I agree with most of what you said, but have a few NEW questions:

1. Companies that benefit from WINE in this way have no incentive to 
contribute back. So why should they? That means that this kind of companies 
are of no big help to WINE, so why should we help them with the licensing 
scheme?

2. Companies like CodeWeavers that have a different business model probably 
would share code back even with the xGPL. They don't lose anything for 
doing it. And with the xGPL they don't have to fear that a competitor will 
make money out of their work. In fact any producer of a Windows app is a 
potential contributer to WINE, since he will help to make its app run under 
Linux. A xGPLed WINE would help ensure that the improvements made by those 
companies come back to the community. This of course without loss to the 
contributer, since selling WINE will not be his business.

So after all it seems that maybe xGPL is an advantage, even if it prevents 
some companies from making money from WINE.

What do you think about that?

Roland