Re: new site nit
On Thu, 27 Mar 2003 08:33:40 +0200 David Fraser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jeremy Newman wrote: On Tue, 2003-03-25 at 22:02, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote: On March 25, 2003 11:48 pm, Dan Kegel wrote: It would be nice if the site recognized normal URLs without the ?page= prefix. That ought to be easy to hack up. The extra verbiage makes links posted in news articles look ugly. I've added more redirects to the site in the .htaccess file. The Following URLs work. http://www.winehq.org/status/ This didnt work for me. 404 error. Roland
Re: Direct3D v8 and Xbox Linux
At 10:04 PM 11/9/02 +0200, Lionel Ulmer wrote: Well, Linux already runs on the Xbox, and the Xbox uses Direct3D. I suppose that there will be some hackers interested in writing Linux games to run on the Xbox, so it might be a good idea to join efforts, or to find some other programmers also interested in helping out implementing Direct3D in Wine. I really do not understand your way of thinking... We are NOT implementing Direct3D support in Wine to encourage people to use this API (they should use OpenGL) but only to enable people to play existing Windows games on Linux. Care to enlighten me as to how Direct3D support in Wine would help them ? I don't understand that much myself, so feel free to correct me. AFAIK the whole graphics system of the XBox look like this: D3D - Hardwaredrivers - Proprietary graphic hardware. If we manage to make a D3D implementation we can make them run games on Xbox. Also keep in mind, that maybe some folks would like to run Windows games on Xbox. That would be possible if they have Wine + d3d running on Xbox Linux. Roland
RE: Direct3D v8 and Xbox Linux
At 05:39 AM 11/9/02 -0700, Andriy Palamarchuk wrote: Roland, Many people on this list strongly disapprove this approach. Search the list archives for spam keyword. Imagine all the Windows and Linux projects on Sourceforge posted requests for help to wine-devel? Or Windows developers asking questions about Windows? Ok, I understand your point of view, thats why I asked. So what do you think about this approach: I will hang-out in newsgroups like comp.os.linux.development.* and wait for someone asking which project he should join/start(this happens every now and then). Then I will have an opportunity to direct him to the Wine project. I think there are more Linux fans out there that don't know about the Wine project than we realize. We need to get the word out... Roland
RE: Direct3D v8 and Xbox Linux
Hello, great job to start coding Direct3D! Keep on the work. Just another input: You certainly have heard about the x-box linux project.http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/ Well, Linux already runs on the Xbox, and the Xbox uses Direct3D. I suppose that there will be some hackers interested in writing Linux games to run on the Xbox, so it might be a good idea to join efforts, or to find some other programmers also interested in helping out implementing Direct3D in Wine. Now another point: I'm willing to help Wine trough advertising: I could regularly post a message to some Newsgroups asking for more developers to join the Wine effort. Do you want this kind of advertising? If yes, just tell me which Newsgroups you would like me to post and I will start posting. I was thinking about posting in the Linux/Windows developer Forums. All suggestions welcome, also about how the ads should look like... Roland
China developing Windows clone
Did you read this: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/19/2116234mode=threadtid=99 Are they using WINE? Do they know about WINE? It sure would help if they work on the WINE source base :) Roland
Put WINE into the donation directory?
Here is an open source donation directory: http://slashdot.org/articles/02/07/21/1813204.shtml?tid=117 How about adding WINE into it? Roland
Re: How well does WINE run if you have a Window$ CD?
At 09:06 AM 6/24/02 -0300, Roland wrote: snip Hello, did I ask the wrong question? I read the manual and it says that only a few basic dlls need to be implemented. For the other we can use the windows dlls. So I think my question makes sense. Is there a particular reason why no one wants to answer it? Sorry for taking your time, Roland
How well does WINE run if you have a Window$ CD?
Hello, most potential WINE users already own a Windows CD. This is obvious because if you want to run a Windows program on Linux it is because you are probably already using it, and this means you have Windows installed somewhere. Now, if I have the Windows CD I can copy all the needed DLLs(and whatever else) to the correct Directory. Now my question how well does WINE run if you follow this approach? If Wine doesn't work 100% doing it this way, I think this should be the main focus, because after this works, it will be just a question of time till we replace all DLLs with our own ones, one at a time. What about DirectX? Can we use those DLLs? I suppose they need Windows drivers so they might not work with Linux. But would it be possible to make the Windows drivers work on Linux so that DirectX would run? I think this would be a good intermediary goal, especially for all those companies wanting to switch from Windows to Linux because they already have Windows CDs. Roland
Do we need Direct3D? How about OpenGL?
Hello, I just thought about this. AFAIK most good 3D games support OpenGL anyway. That means, they can run without D3D, right? If this is true maybe it would be more of an advantage to concentrate on other parts of DirectX first. Postpone D3D to a later moment...in a few years or so :)) Roland
Re: How big is the Direct3D stuff?
At 06:00 PM 6/6/02 +0200, Lionel Ulmer wrote: community's for not doing anything at all and letting things in the state it was (well, not TG's fault except if you consider that they 'bought out' the people who would have worked on it in their free time, but that is just plain good business sense :-) ). What do you mean by 'bought out'? I suppose there where WINE contributors who now work for TG, right? If this is the case it is another point in favour of the LGPL... Roland
RE: How big is the Direct3D stuff?
At 08:10 PM 6/6/02 +0200, Patrik Stridvall wrote: Secondly who are you to tell people what they can or can't do for a living? Huh? Did I say it was wrong what they did? Please provide some evidence, otherwise apologize... It was not meant as an accusation, merely a statement that it is not of your concern what other people do. Please don't try to distract. Someone mentioned that programmers got bought out, then I asked what that meant exactly. I never said, that I didn't agree with programmers working for TG. In fact I think there is nothing wrong with that. So I didn't tell anyone they shouldn't do it. Ok? Roland
RE: How big is the Direct3D stuff?
At 08:37 PM 6/6/02 +0200, Patrik Stridvall wrote: I'm not distracting. I wasn't refering to anything you said. I merely stated that whether you agree or not I don't consider to be of your concern. This will be my last email to this thread. You originally said: Secondly who are you to tell people what they can or can't do for a living? And this is nonsense, since I didn't say anything like that. Please keep your twisted logic for youself, I won't bother discussing this anymore, I have better things to do... Roland
How big is the Direct3D stuff?
Hello, since it seems that TG is not going to release their D3D stuff, my question is: why is it so difficult to reimplement this? How big is the amount of code? Roland
Re: DirectX API information - where?
At 10:47 PM 4/3/02 +0200, Andreas Mohr wrote: search.microsoft.com. That's where I get quite some information from. Apart from that, mostly web searches and my pretty good collection of books (it's starting to extend to 1 meter of expert windows books now :-) Ok, let me ask this question: where do you get the information about the *nix API, the X-Windows API, OpenGL etc? Roland
Re: Why Wine is like playing the guitar
At 10:47 PM 3/19/02 -0800, Michael Robertson wrote: The challenge we have now is that the goal for WINE is an architectual one (learn every chord). While nobody can deny the value of a solid underpinning, users don't care about the architecture. They want to hear music! And with Wine this means what programs can I run? I agree! You get more people offering to be on documentation teams. And you get more developers. Right! Very good article. I just want to add one thing: We need a centralized site where users can vote what programs they want supported on WINE. I think Transgaming has already done this for their subscriber base. I think that codeweavers has something similar. I would be good if we could put that databases together. Maybe we should also categorize a little, like TOP-10 games, apps, etc... Roland
Re: Why Wine is like playing the guitar
At 01:14 AM 3/20/02 -0800, Steven Edwards wrote: this software is designed to run the following: MS Word Lotus Notes Quicken You really have two tasks at hand. 1. Running some windows apps 2. Moving People off of Windows Apps I don't see number 2 as a task. Our goal is to just implement task 1. Task 2 has nothing to do with WINE primarily. There are some Windows Apps that have no Linux equivalent, think of all the games... 1. Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook.) 2. Internet Explorer. 3. AOL 4. TuboTax 5. Quicken/QuickBooks 6. Lotus Notes 7. All of the P2P software 8. Juno 9. Act 10. The Palm Desktop Plus tons of games Roland
Re: Codeweavers' integrity (or lack thereof)
At 02:36 PM 2/25/02 -0700, Brett Glass wrote: At 02:32 PM 2/25/2002, Andreas Mohr wrote: I'm not much in favour of a license change, but if there's enough reason to believe that a new license boosts Wine's productivity, then I'm all for it. There has been no credible evidence to that effect presented to date. However, the threats that a new license would pose to participation in the project by companies such as Transgaming or Lindows have been amply demonstrated. --Brett Glass Agreed. And I want to add that we also should think if the price we are paying with the license change in the long run is worth the EVENTUAL TEMPORARY boost in productivity. It MAY BE that now we have a temporary boost because one company wishes this license change and will start to contribute more after that. But it is not certain if that company will still be around in some years or if other companies will NOT contribute to WINE because of the new xGPL license. After all, if we wanted a productivity boost lets license all WINE code to Microsoft, I'm sure they would agree to help develop it further in turn :))) Roland
Article about Wine license
http://desktoplinux.com/articles/AT9068852873.html
Re: Jeremy makes a persuasive argument for LGPL
At 09:07 PM 2/18/02 -0500, Anthony Taylor wrote: Yes, I have read that by now. This is another point in favour of the BSD license. No, that's a point in *Apples* favour. The BSD license did not make Apple give anything back; they were not required to participate. They Ok, let me put it this way: some people say the BSD license is bad because no company will never give code back because they don't have to. The example from Apple just proves this extreme point of view wrong. Some companies will give back even if they don't have to. Granted, they also have a sense of money, too. Exactly. They expect that improvements made by others to their kernel can be used in later products. At least the bug-fixes! Take, for instance, Microsoft's attempted hijacking of the Kerberos protocol. MS almost took an accepted standard, and almost perverted it Well, I think we are still better off as when M$ would have created their own protcol from scratch. They certainly have the money to do that. The way it is now, we just have to implement the extensions to be able to use M$-Kerberos. I don't see where the BSD license has brought any kind of disadvantage here. Best regards, Roland
Re: Licensing Open Source in General
At 10:03 AM 2/19/02 +0100, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer wrote: It *IS* a fair point of view - if someone just adds a bit of value, why should they be able to make loads of cash of the much bigger original work without giving anything back? No one will make loads of cash by just adding a bit of value. Why? Simply because no one would pay them much for that. It would be simpler to add that bit of value yourself or hire a programmer to do that in a weekend. People would only pay for big improvements, like Lindows, they invested around 5 million AFAIK. Selling a proprietary fork of an open source application is much more like stealing a car, giving it a new paint, and then selling it. The thief added value (the new paint), so by your argumentation, he should be able to make money of it and what he's doing is perfectly ok. First of all, you cannot steal something that is already free. But lets apply the rest of your analogy: Suppose the car is under a BSD license, which means everyone can get one for free. Now, someone gets the car, gives it a new paint and sells that product. How much would you pay him? Of course, since you can get that very same car for free also, you would only pay him the amount equivalent for the paint + the work involved in painting. If he wanted to charge you 10.000 for the painted car, you would laugh on his face, get that car for free and paint it yourself over the weekend(or pay someone else to do that). But if he charged you 40 $, you would probably pay him, since he as a professional would do a better job and you wouldn't have to make your hands dirty. In effect that 40 would probably be cheaper than the money it would cost you to do the job yourself, if you also count the time investment necessary on your side. So I think this business model is perfectly ok! This is the great advantage of the BSD license. It enables business. With the BSD license applied to your analogy we soon would have lots of businesses created to enhance the car: Painting, Putting sound equipment to the car, increasing the engine power, etc...Customers interested in one enhancement or the other would be willing to pay for it. Eventually one enhancement would be so popular that a group of volunteers would integrate it into the original car. What would be the GPL equivalent in your analogy: you can have the car for free, but any enhancements you make have to be given back at 0 cost also. Now suppose a guy wants to make the paint job. He will have to make it for free! So no one would do that of course. The result of this would be that if you want to paint the car you will have to do it yourself. Or you have to wait till someone else wants to do it and give it back for free afterwards. The GPL discourages business... Of course there are still business models possible, though restricted, for example: you hire the guy for painting the car as you wish. But that means you pay him in advance. And if this has been done once...no one else has to pay for it again... The GPL prevents this from happening but where is the advantage in that? Forcing everyone to contribute, preventing this type of theft. As I said, you cannot steal what is already free. They are, if they choose to go by sane licenses. Releasing products as Open Source certainly hasn't hurt companies that aren't scared of doing it. Hmm, that might be true in some cases, especially where the software requires some kind of specialized support, where you pay more for the support than the software itself. The problem is that many companies refuse to even consider sane licenses, not that they couldn't do it. I don't consider the xGPL to be that sane anymore. Personally I keep wondering if it would be that bad if we had a company producing a better version of WINE than the free one. Why should this be bad? - it would take users (and therefore potential developers) away from the real version. If that was true no one would be making Mozilla, OpenOffice, even Linux. When Linux started the proprietary Unix was MUCH better. History showed, that the opensource Linux was capable of catching up with UNIX and even become better. - why should someone who made just a couple of changes make lots of profit from (mostly) someone else's work without giving anything back to that someone else? It's certainly not fair. Read above again. If you want to make big money you will have to invest MUCH. It is fair to get a corresponding return for that. I dare to claim that Linux distributors have done a lot more for Linux than Apple has done for the BSDs, partially because licenses forced them to give back rather than just keeping things closed. I wonder how profitable the Linux distributions are...and will be in the long run... Roland
Re: License change vote results
At 08:21 PM 2/19/02 +0100, Ove Kaaven wrote: Hmm. I had probably Uwe's requests for wine-license in mind more than anything else, so must have missed that. But should we change the list name now? Yes, I think we should. But how? I propose we create a new mailing list first called: [EMAIL PROTECTED] There we will discuss the name of the new list. After we have decided on the name of the new list by a voting process of course, we will make that new list. After that we can finally continue discussing wine-license... :))) Hahaha, this is just a joke... Roland
Re: License change vote results
At 05:10 PM 2/19/02 -0500, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote: Well, not that I did not have enough reasons before, but this lands you in my killfile. Hmm, you just gave me a strong reason to put you in my killfile. But I won't since I don't have one... And as far as I'm concerned, YOU ARE NOT WELCOMED on this list. So do everyone a favour, and bugger off. Well, as far as I'm concerned Brett has provided some of the best articles on this mailing list, at least what regards licensing. Unlike other writers he mostly uses factual, logic-based arguments instead of emotional ones... But I understand that you put him into your killfile. You are not prepared yet to hear the truth... Roland
RE: Clarification on my call for license change
At 08:58 PM 2/15/02 +0100, Patrik Stridvall wrote: Just because you might possibly be right as far as CodeWeavers are concern doesn't nessarily mean that it is good for Wine. Yes and it makes sense that you do because increasing the amount of freely available Wine code can only benifit you, since you can use it in other projects for other customers. Patrik, doesn't this also benefit WINE? If we increase the amount of freely available WINE code this is certainly good isn't it? So there is also a strong argument in favor of the xGPL in your post. What do you say about that? Best regards, Roland
Re: Jeremy makes a persuasive argument for LGPL
At 12:32 PM 2/15/02 -0700, Brett Glass wrote: Exactly the opposite is true. When the (L)GPL is stamped onto code, every commercial programmer must reinvent the wheel rather than using it. Many of these programmers work for small businesses that are trying to compete Another good point from your side. And here comes another question from my side: The point in favor of the GPL as brought by Jeremy, is that the xGPL will encourage contributions. I have to agree with Jeremie: with the BSD license, companies will tend to keep things back. Look at Apples OS-X. It is based on BSD, but they probably NEVER will make their code public. So what benefit does the community have from it? Jeremie pointed out, that he wants to give all code produced in his company back to the WINE-tree. Now if WINE is GPL he will have an excellent argument for his customers: sorry, we have to contribute all code back. If WINE is not GPLd, his customers will probably want to keep the code proprietary, in order to have a competitive advantage over others... What can you say about that Brett? Maybe there is another kind of license that could adress both issues...but I doubt it... Best regards, Roland
RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
At 04:13 PM 2/15/02 -0500, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote: just fare. An LGPL licence will keep most of them still viable (such as TransGaming, for example). WTF is your problem with it? -- Dimi. AFAIK, Transgaming will have big problems with LGPL. It is Codeweavers that will still be viable. Roland
Re: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
At 11:16 AM 2/18/02 +0100, Boris Buegling wrote: sells this whole package. With LGPL, they had to give the code back or they can't do their project. Since they are not giving back their code, there is no loss in not doing their project for the WINE project as a whole. A coding There is no loss for WINE, ok, but there is no win also. So where is the advantage of the lGPL? Furthermore it is not so clear that they won't contribute code back in the future. Look at Apple for example, they use FreeBSD but contributed the core of their OS X to the community: http://developer.apple.com/darwin/ Transgaming announced that they will contribute code back. But even if they don't my arguments are still valid. company like Lindows gain everything, without giving anything back. That is the Not only Lindows gains. Every user of WINE gains. And you have to agree that most users probably are not developers, so they didn't contribute anything back. At least this will be the case once WINE is stable and running. And you seem to miss an important point. Lindows gains mostly by adding a lot of features to the free WINE(read Brett Glass economic analysis in one of his emails please). Whats so bad about that? If this was an easy job to do, CodeWeavers(or any other company) could do that. Why aren't they doing it themselves? Because it costs a lot. Lindows is investing like 5 Million at least to make their WINE run properly, and they didn't get a cent back for it until now. Why do you want to prevent them from doing that? I think it is very good that the WINE project gives opportunity to build businesses and employ people! It's an illusion to think that Lindows is making money out of the free WINE. They are making money by investing hard cash... problem that Jeremy sees and that you ignore. If Codeweavers release their code under LGPL and the main WINE tree would be BSD, all would be fine: Companies could not use Codeweavers code in close-source projects, while non-profit Again, why shouldn't companies be able to use WINE code in their closed source projects? The fact that Jeremy doesn't like the way things are going is probably because he fears that his own business is going to suffer under it. Best regards, Roland
RE: BSD, Gav, LGPL, Jeremy, and business
At 01:49 PM 2/18/02 -0500, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote: And why is that? In fact, Gav failed to even hint at why a LGPLed Wine would invalidate TG's current business model. AFAIK TG sells their own version of WINE. Once WINE is GPL'd, they will have to give all their code back. So why should anyone buy their WINE if they can get all the code for free? Roland
Re: Jeremy makes a persuasive argument for LGPL
At 01:58 PM 2/18/02 -0600, Sean Farley wrote: They have release Darwin as well as an NFS testing tool. FreeBSD did benefit a lot from that testing tool. Yes, I have read that by now. This is another point in favour of the BSD license. Besides, as the owner of a company, he can always decide not to develop code for those potential customers who wish to keep the resulting code closed. Of course he can do that. But this means losing a lot of customers to other companies. The xGPL would prevent this. Roland
Re: Clarification on my call for license change
At 08:19 AM 2/15/02 -0600, Jeremy White wrote: Several people have asked me to clarify my original post. I just don't understand one thing: How does your company expect to make money once WINE is xGPLed? If all your code has to be contributed back, why should I buy it from your company? Best regards, Roland
Re: Dr. Seuss, licensing, and WINE
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
License change: patenting for one year?
Hello, someone here already had the idea of making a patenting scheme. Maybe this would be a good idea. A company can take the code, improve it and doesn't have to give modifications back until one year has passed. That would give them a competitive edge. Users would pay that company to be able to use always the newest versions. After one year, the code has to be contributed and is placed under the xGPL. The disadvantage of this would be that it would slow down the WINE progress or lead to code duplication. Free developers who don't want to wait a year would start duplicating the code that the company already has but doesn't want to give back yet... Maybe it would really be a good idea to open a web-site with a forum for this discussion, or how about another mailing list? I think the problem with this discussion is that we seem to have at least 2 distinctive groups: 1. People who want to make money selling WINE or derivatives == Anti xGPL 2. People who have no financial interest(individual developers) or companies who have another business model than the above == Pro xGPL Of course there are also people from group 2 that are against the xGPL for one reason or another. Ok, how do we solve this conflict? Maybe there is no solution other than splitting up WINE? That means we would have two code bases corresponding to the two conflicting interest groups. I think that the xGPL group will win on the long run because group one would consist of many people who have only a limited interest in sharing back! That means that the codebase wouldn't evolve much over the long run, and we would have more companies like Lindows who simply build their own version of WINE and improve it, without giving back. Of course there probably will be a group of people involved like on FreeBSD but I wonder if the xGPL group wouldn't have more members The problem with the actual license is that it has created exactly this kind of situation: Companies don't share back at all or only if certain requirements(incoming profit) have been fulfilled. This effectively created a situation that is similar to the proposed patenting scheme. So basically I see two options A. We make that patenting scheme official, which basically would correspond to the way things are NOW. B. We split WINE in two projects. B is my current prediction of what will happen. In fact CodeWeavers has already announced that this will happen(they will base their code on xGPL no matter what), so it is very obvious. The only alternative is if someone finds an ingenious solution but I doubt it is possible since the involved interests are so antagonistic. We simply cannot sit in the same boat if one group wants to go north, the other south. Roland
Re: Wine license change
At 07:54 AM 2/8/02 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 3. If no combination of existing licenses will suffice, write a license that does. That would be the perfect solution. BUT, I think you didn't consider that there is a precondition that has to be fulfilled: Is it possible to make a license that fits all needs? That's the BIG IF in my opinion. And, as I wrote in my last message, at the moment I tend to think that there is no such license possible because the interests of the participants are antagonistic. To write it again we have two interests: 1. People who want to make money selling WINE or derivates == anti xGPL 2. People who contribute for free or have another business model than the above == pro xGPL Roland
Re: Dr. Seuss, licensing, and WINE
At 11:31 AM 2/8/02 -0700, Brett Glass wrote: Perhaps a simple economic analysis would help to assuage those egos. Hey, I never thought about it this way, but I must agree that your analysis is an interesting and valid viewpoint... Helped me a lot to see things from another point of view. Just want to add why it is in the interest of the Company to contribute code back: this is to prevent the codebases from drifting away too much. If this happens, the company will no longer be able to benefit from the Open Wine codebase... Roland
Wine License change: Open question to Jeremy White
Quote from Jeremy White: 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. Obviously you, Jeremy started this discussion. I don't want to sound curious, but I have the feeling that our discussion will be in vain if we don't know about those events you can't disclose. I mean suppose that the list reaches a consensus to stay at the BSD license. This wouldn't make a difference would it? You would simply say, sorry: but I have my reasons which I can't disclose and will start a xGPL fork of WINE now... So I think to consider all interests involved we must obviously first KNOW what they are specifically...otherwise we will just be wasting time without touching the really important points(your specific concerns among others...). Best regards, Roland
Article about WINE on DesktopLinux.com
Hello, I found a very interesting article about WINE there: http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5502857506.html I have to fully agree with that author, I think he is a real genius! :))) Roland
Sponsoring by IBM, lets get it done
Hello, to put an end to this discussion, I will start trying to contact people at IBM for sponsoring, unless someone more qualified wants to do it. Anyone? Ok, so where do I start, can someone give me an email adress? I also wanted to know some technical terms: 1. How do you call the person who is TECHNICALLY responsible for a project, in this case, for the Linux stuff at IBM? 2. How do you call the person who is FINANCIALLY responsible for a project, in this case, for the Linux stuff at IBM? If someone can provide the answer to 1 and 2, it would help, the email adress I will figure out myself...if no one can provide one... Thanks...Roland
Re: How about sponsoring from IBM?
At 02:12 PM 1/12/02 -0500, David Elliott wrote: hahahhahahahahaahahahahahahaha Sorry, ROTFLMAO, see below. Good to know you are having some fun right now! :)) Laughing is healthy! Read up on your computer history a bit son. OS/2 ran Windows apps, and from about version 2 upwards ran all DOS and Windows stuff perfectly (except for the Win32s stuff). I am sure IBM does /not/ want to make the same mistake again. The question is, where the mistake was? The only similarity between OS/2 and WINE+LINUX is that both want to run M$ Windows software. You should ask some additional questions like: -would OS/2 have failed if it was for free like Linux+WINE? -would it fail if it had the ever growing acceptance that Linux is having. -would it fail if it where actually one of the most used OS on the server side? Even IBM is putting Linux on their big-iron. Ask yourself, why don't they use OS/2 for it? There are also other points to consider: -WINE is not an IBM project/product. So they can pull back from it anytime without losing their face. They couldn't do this with OS/2, so it costs them Billions for all the user support, etc...Thats where the real problem is! -Why should someone pay for OS/2 if they can have WINDOWS? Moving from one proprietary system to another is nonsense. But Linux+WINE are free, so it would make sense to move from WINDOWS to Linux. Some people would argue that had IBM comitted to supporting Win32 stuff that OS/2 would still be around. Of course the bottom line is that the way they were doing this meant MS got the money for a copy of Windows every time someone bought OS/2. Not good. Wine wouldn't And this also means that OS/2 will cost as much as WINDOWS at least, so there is no incentive to move. As for IBM investing in Wine. I suppose there are a couple things they could do. For one, they could somehow use the $10e6 you suggest but who would they pay it to. What might be more helpful is if some of the guys and gals that wrote OS/2 would help out with Wine. They Well, I think once they are willing to pay that money, I'm sure we would find out how to use it in a meaningfull way. There are at least two ways I can think about it. 1. Invest money in some company that already is on WINE developing like, Codeweavers and Transgaming. Actually I remember some guy of one of that companies saying it would contribute back some huge chunk of code they developed if they got the funding to pay for their costs from somewhere. 2. Pay some programmer(might be someone already developing WINE on their par-time) to become a full-time WINE developer. Anyway, the bottom line is that IBM is not going to start throwing money at stuff. They made that mistake with OS/2 and look where that got 'em. Once again I think this is no fair comparison. Investing on OS/2 meant a much BIGGER investment in money and, worse a company commitment to that product, which meant they couldn't simply pull back when they wanted, they had to support if for YEARS to come. With WINE things are totally different. They have to invest much less, in fact they can invest any arbitrarily value. I don't think 10 Million is much for them in comparison with what they invested(and still pay) on OS/2. No, IBM spends money when and where it helps their bottom line. Taking down MS does not help their bottom line. Building their own services does help their bottom line. IBM could care less if everyone could run Windows software on Linux. They are in the business of AFAIK, one of their bottom lines is promoting LINUX popularity, I don't want to quote one of their web-sites again(read my other mails). I think no one here will disagree if I say that WINE is THE cornerstone to promoting Linux popularity. Note that IBM has already caught the eye of MS with IBMs ad campaign for moving onto 390 systems running Linux. Some of those internal MS memos recently released are really anti-IBM. Right now I think MS is at the point where they have competitors. They can go Since IBM already caught the eye of MS it doesn't make a difference if they also invest on WINE. waste their money on MS. When it breaks, let 'em waste more money on moving it back to what worked. MS is going to shoot itself in the foot soon enough, no need to bring out your own shotgun. If this was true, we wouldn't need Linux at all. The reality is different. We need to give the end-user a REAL alternative, and here is where WINE comes in... Roland
Re: How about sponsoring from IBM?
At 08:35 AM 1/11/02 -0600, Paul Clarke wrote: My attempt to convince you otherwise: http://oss.software.ibm.com/developer/opensource/linux http://www.ibm.com/linux Paul Clarke, IBM Good, so it really seems that IBM is commited to Linux. Now my question is, would it be too much to ask IBM to spend 1% of that 1 billion for Linux on WINE? Of course we are assuming that a full-featured WINE would DRASTICALLY increase the success of Linux. This would be in accordance with: ...with a shared vision of making Linux succeed. quote from http://www-124.ibm.com/developer/opensource/linux/ If the assumption is true I think those 10 Million would be the best spent part of that 1 Billion. Paul, do you know the people in charge of the Linux sponsoring? How about talking to them about this idea? It would be interesting to hear what they say. Maybe they even don't know about the WINE project... Just my 0.000 000 001$ Roland
Re: How about sponsoring from IBM?
One senior manager at IBM explained it to me as follows: Most senior management at IBM has been with the company for a long time. Most of those went through the OS/2 era. Many people may not realize it, but IBM put their heart and soul into OS/2 - and were burned very, very badly by it. As a consequence, many people at IBM are understandably very reluctant to contemplate another attack on Windows dominance of the desktop. This doesn't mean that I think helping Wine would be bad for IBM (or I wouldn't have been such a pest), but it may help folks to understand why IBM isn't very focused on Linux as a desktop OS. Jeremy Ok, I understand your point. But I think there is a big difference here. They put their heart and soul into OS/2. I'm not asking for them to do the same with WINE. All I ask is to contributing a little from their huge Linux budget on WINE. Even if WINE doesn't work out the way everyone is imagining they will not have lost much, only 1% of the Linux budget. Putting heart and soul into it is something that no one is demanging... Roland
How about sponsoring from IBM?
Hello, it seems that IBM is becoming a major Linux advocate. What would be the possibilities of having it sponsor the WINE project? I mean 1 Million dollars is not much for IBM, but it certainly would mean a lot to the development of WINE. IBM would also profit of this. Since Linux runs on their supercomputers, it would be nice if you could run all Windows programs there(you need another Pentium emulator then, but that would not be a big problem, would it?). Just thinking about this... Roland
Re: How about sponsoring from IBM?
Just to add a fact to my statements: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-4656230-0.html quote: IBM CEO Lou Gerstner announced IBM's $1 billion Linux commitment last month. (this was january 2001)
How many APIs have been implemented yet?
Hello, I`m new to this list and I have some questions: 1.How many APIs are there in Windows? I heard something around 12000, is that correct? 2.How many of them have been implemented yet(not necessaryly bug-free)? Finally I want to add something about being able to run M$ software, specifically M$-Office. Many see a problem in there because M$ is likely to complicate things by using obscure APIs and other nasty tricks to make it hard for Office to work under Wine. This way we will be facing an uphill battle all the time. But I think we shouldn't worry too much about it. In fact, I think there are replacements for most M$ software, like Staroffice and the like. The main concern should be the ability to run the huge amounts of 3rd party software. And this will not be a problem, since the producers of this software use the well documented APIs which will always have to be publicly available. Once we run all those apps, more and more users will use Linux. As for the M$ Office, people can start using Staroffice, since it can read M$ Office fileformats... Just my 0.05$ Roland
