Sam Interviews Rob Mensching, maintainer of the WIX project and an Open Source pioneer at Microsoft.
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I do not see any advantage to the WIX project over the NullSoft Installer project. WIX is under the CPL which is incompatible with the GPL but the NullSoft Installer project is under a GPL compatible license. And having access to modify WIX project is of limited value without being able to modify the full MSI format/system itself. Simply improving WIX will never help mature the MSI system to accomplish things that DPKG and RPM perform.
fluke, NSIS is more easily compared to the Windows Installer (MSI) itself than to the WiX toolset. When comparing NSIS to the Windows Installer, you'll find there are significant differences between the engines when it comes to enterprise deployment scenarios. The Windows Installer was designed to be very robust, scale to very large applications, and be distributed out to many desktops/servers. As it is today, the Windows Installer alone doesn't do as well for web download scenarios as most would like (me included) but I know that is on the team's radar. I'm not a legal wonk but, personally, the GPL didn't seem like a good fit for the WiX toolset. I didn't want any confusion around what licenses were allowed for output from the WiX toolset. The CPL seemed a better fit for what we needed because it allowed the packaged program to be released under any license the owner wanted. Finally, agree to a certain level that participation in the WiX toolset cannot directly improve the Windows Installer. However, the WiX toolset community does improve the Windows Installer in two very real ways. First, we extend what the Windows Installer can do today by adding CustomActions and coordination layers on top of the Windows Installer engine. Second, we drive a lot of feedback into the Windows Installer to help them prioritize features going forward.
Thank you for getting back to me. I wouldn't push that GPL is the right fit for WiX toolset either. NSIS is also not under the GPL, it is under the zLib license. But unlike CPL, the zLib license is GPL compatible. Other GPL compatible licenses include: X11 license, 3-clause BSD license, Public Domain, Intel Open Source License and W3C Notice/License. I have never run into someone that was confused about the terms of use of the output from a GPL application. I know a lot of people that have used GCC to create non-GPL works without any problem with the fact that GCC itself is GPL. X11 and 3-clause BSD would have also allowed others to package programs under any license the owner wanted. The types of improvements to MSI that I would want to make would be along the lines of what the Maximum RPM [1] describes. Several of the query capabilities of RPM is missing from MSI package management. There have been several times where confirming the install status file by file of a package has been invaluable. Or being able to query which package owns a specific file. References: [1] http://rpm.org/local/maximum-rpm.ps.gz
fluke, it never even crossed my mind to ask whether the license for the WiX toolset should be GPL compatible. Honestly, it hasn't been an issue since no one has ever brought it up until now. If I had to go back to do it again then I'd maybe think to ask about it but for now the CPL is working okay for us. Personally, I would very much prefer that there were very few licenses that are simple to understand and didn't have lawyers disagreeing about their meaning. I know I work at Microsoft and this probably discredits my point of view, but I really like the three ~1 page licenses that Microsoft put out recently. That covered the bases I needed pretty well... of course, none of them are OSI approved. <smile/> Finally, there are other things that I would prioritize higher on the MSI feature list than the ones you list but those requests of yours would be in my list as well.
Thanks again for getting back to me. I wish there was an option on Port 25 to get an email when someone replies to a post. I can understand not wanting to change horses in mid-stream. And I can also understand the desire to have a straight forward simplistic license that allows us to get down to being programmers instead of lawyers. I personally think the 3-clause BSD license achieves this. I would not be so quick to state that being from Microsoft discredits your view. It is views from Microsoft that has made me care about FOSS and license compatiblity. I truely bought into Cairo's statements that a modern OS should be made up of interchangable objects with well documented interfaces. So far, Free Software has been the closest I can get to Cairo. I have found a successful FOSS project has the following: 1) Something that motivates developers to try the current functionality of the project 2) Something that motivates developers to seek possible improvements that can be made 3) Something that motivates developers to become familar with the source code in the area they which to improve WiX has probably achieved all three of these already for a critical mass of developers, which is great. But if you ever want to widen your audience, then GPL compatiblity has been a hot topic for several projects including the drafting of the Mozilla Public License. In my opinion, GPL compatiblity is important for two reasons: A) Investiment in becoming familar with code can assist more than just the immediate project through code re-use B) Take every step to avoid code taint when working on other projects There is more motivation in becoming familar with code if doing so can assist more than one project. But it is also important to keep in mind that we now live in the world where Darl McBride and Ken Brown are willing to point out the smallest similarities in code. Even if a programmer doesn't intend to copy code between projects, even being familar with code from an incompatible projects can be problematic.
I recently attended OSCON 2006, and had a lot of fun being there. Microsoft’s presence in the Open Source World is still a novelty (to say the least), so I always got a reaction out of people at the conference when they saw my badge!
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