Seeing the news of Apple using DXVK for the their new toolkit rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t think it’s right that corporations can just use your tools and give nothing back.
Given this, I think it’d be a good idea for DXVK to switch to MPL. I think hard copyleft would probably kill the project, but file based is a pretty good compromise in my opinion.
As much as I hate apple, I think anything to dampen Microsoft’s monopoly on gaming is a good thing. And although it sucks that apple isn’t giving anything back, I think in the end this is a good thing. If a game runs on osx through the toolkit, chances are it’ll work on Linux through proton.
Wine is under LGPL, a similar license. So yes, I think so.
I dont know a damn thing about licenses. How would your change impact other projects? (like bottles, lutris, steam, etc)
With this license in particular, nothing. The license makes it so that if you modify the source code of a file you have to release that source code upon distribution. However, if you don’t modify the source code, you don’t have to release it. This allows it to be packaged with proprietary code, as opposed to the hard copyleft licenses, which are “viral”.
If DXVK were to ship with the GPL license, anything that touches it, even beyond a file level, would have to be open source upon distribution. This would probably kill the project, so that’s why I think MPL is a better option.
It would be quite difficult to do that now, as they would need the permission of everyone who has code in it.
I guess the question is would Apple have used it if it was under the MPL?
It isn’t that easy. Most licenses require everyone who ever contributed to consent to relicensing.
True, but I still think it would be worth pursuing. I think a file based copyleft approach provides enough of a benefit to justify it.
