[luau] WineX Question

[Warren Togami]

On Mon, 2002-04-29 at 15:56, Dustin Cross wrote:
> Aloha,
> 
> I don't play games, so I haven't payed much attention to WineX, but after
> all the talk on the list lately I decided to take a look, but you can't
> download it!  Isn't WineX based on Wine?  Wine is GPL, so how does WineX
> get away with charging and no way to download without paying?  Their
> license says they are NOT opensource, but they came from an opensource
> project?
> 
> Dusty
> 

Wine was under the X11 license until about a month ago.  X11, like the
BSD license is Open Source, but it also allows anyone to change the
license to anything else (Closed Source or other licenses).  There is a
whole holy war between the BSD and GPL license camps about which is more
"Free" and "Open", but that is a story for another day.

CodeWeavers, the company that did much of the Wine development, had no
problems in publishing their code under the X11 license for many years. 
This license worked very well for Corel in their choosing Wine for
facilitation of quick porting of Corel WordPerfect Office and Corel Draw
to Linux.

However, when Transgaming and Lindows came on the scene CodeWeavers
cried foul.  Lindows hired CodeWeavers to make improvements to Wine to
make Microsoft Office work properly.  Those changes are now in the Wine
trees, and they are the reason why CodeWeavers was able to release
CrossOver Office.

Apparently CodeWeavers got upset with Lindows when Lindows wanted to
keep the code closed for the time being.  That was within their right
because they paid CodeWeavers big $$$ for the coding work.  Behind the
scenes some nasty stuff happened, the code ended up open, and they ended
their business relationship.

CodeWeavers also got angry at Transgaming's relicensing of the Wine tree
under the ASPL.  The ASPL is basically Open Source, but only free for
non-commercial use.  CodeWeavers got really angry that Transgaming
refused to immediately release their DCOM code to make InstallShield and
several other key Windows components work.

At this point the Wine developers were at each others throats and a huge
flame fest erupted.  CodeWeavers incited a change of license from X11 to
LGPL license.

The stinking rich CEO of Lindows tried to calm things down by hosting
WineConf, a conference of Wine developers somewhere in California.  He
paid for all expenses for the Wine developers.  They had some
interesting talks about Wine technical stuff, but the explosive stuff
was when Gabriel State, President of Transgaming gave his discussion
about Wine licensing.  I'll summarize:

1. Transgaming cannot immediately release all code to the X11 tree for
economic reasons.  They spent tens of thousands of dollars alone in
writing the DCOM stuff for InstallShield, and they need a return in
investment.  The only way they will get a return is if their product has
value added beyond the competition.  Their business model of
Street-Performer Protocol depends on this.  It has been somewhat
successful with 3000+ subscribers, and Mandrake followed with 6000+
subscribers.  
2. Transgaming cannot make their codebase under the LGPL due to the DMCA
anti-circumvention provisions.  They coded stuff in their distributed
Wine binary that allows games with CD copy protection to actually work. 
Under the LGPL they wouldn't be able to re-integrate those closed source
portions and distribute a binary.
3. Transgaming actually WANTS to release much of their code for one
important reason.  Sections of code that are not strategic to their
value added product (like DirectX and DCOM) are a burden to maintain. 
This is especially the many little general bug fixes that they make. 
They want to release this kind of code partly because it costs more for
them to maintain the code delta than any perceived strategic value.  The
main reason however is that they believe in Open Source, and they want
to give code back to the community at every chance they get.
4. Transgaming is willing to trade large sections of their strategic
code to the X11 tree in trade for Open Source portions.  This is
actually occurring as we speak, with some Wine developers working on an
implementation of ALSA sound drivers which will greatly improve the
quality for Wine (even for OSS, because the current Wine OSS driver is
crippled due to ALSA problems).  This trading will continue in the
future.

Subsequent to WineConf, Wine broke into two branches, X11 (ReWind) and
LGPL (Wine).  Most developers actually have decided to contribute their
code to X11 because it benefits the most people.  Those changes pretty
much automatically go to LGPL too due to the nature of the licensing.

A while ago I was deeply worried that this schism would be very
detrimental to Wine, but now I think things will be okay.  X11 ReWind
has most of the developer support, while the very few developers who
refuse to license to X11 are the selfish ones.  But hey, that's okay! 
That is their right, and even this will be self correcting.  Some key
pieces in LGPL will drift away from X11, but they will be periodically
traded for Transgaming ASPL and perhaps Lindows pieces.

In the end, the only one that loses will be Microsoft.  Now please do
your part by subscribing.