D3DXCreateTeapot
Following the question as to how to implement D3DXCreateTeapot, might I suggest making it in the form of a wine glass? Given that is unlikely to negatively affect anything (indeed the entire method does border on the ridiculous) I think it would make a nice hidden touch. Regards Ian
Dates in Wine announcement
Very small suggestion - it would be helpful to have dates included somewhere (preferably near the top) of the wine announce pages, for example: http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.1.12 This will let people who come to it via search engines know what date this particular release was made on, without having to dig around. (it will also help prevent people mistaking an old development release for a new one - I'm sure most people have seen at least one news story about something where the reporter/blogger is reporting years-old news as new because they didn't look at the dates on the article, or there were no dates or they were a hard to spot grey colour). Just a small suggestion. Ian
Wine forums page links
The page http://www.winehq.org/site/forums needs to link to the new forums at http://forum.winehq.org/ (it does, but just in the site-wide sidebar not the page body). Regards, Ian
Wine1.0 and LGPLv3?
Just to resurrect this topic, as last time, of the responses to my email, two were positive (and the other just pointed out that I'd mistaken the Samba licensing for LGPL instead of GPL) but nothing else happened after that. Seeing as Wine is officially going to be having a 1.0 in the not too distant future, this would seem like the ideal time to introduce a license change ( e.g. Samba went to GPLv3 along with a version jump). I remember the WineConf 2007 presentation PDF from Alexandre mentioned it as a post-1.0 possibility - it would seem to me that 1.0 would in fact be the ideal time to make such a change - being able to say anything pre-1.0 is LGPLv2+ and anything 1.0+ is LGPLv3+ is quite nice and is easy to understand. LGPLv3 has a lot of benefits over the previous version (see my previous email below), some of which are particularly pertinent given Microsoft's attitude towards it (e.g. in the Novell agreement that led to a third draft of the GPL, Wine would seem to be excluded from the patent protection agreement - see http://tinyurl.com/25at6e). It would be great to have a decision made on this - personally, I can't see any reason why LGPLv3 would be detrimental to WINE (for example, I can't see any reason CodeWeavers would dislike any of the new provisions, which mostly target troll companies), and numerous reasons why it would be a good thing. Ian Macfarlane ps: Here's the email I sent about this some time back, but with the bits about Samba and Solaris snipped out: On 7/13/07, Ian Macfarlane [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've been meaning to ask about this since (L)GPL3 was released. The version 3 of the (L)GPL license has numerous benefits: - It's much more legally sound in the rest of the world (IMO one of the most important factors about the new license) - numerous reasons for this e.g. referencing WIPO rather than US laws. - It has an explicit patent agreement (really an extension of the above - (L)GPLv2 has an implicit patent agreement, but this is only valid in the US) - this means that people who contribute to and/or distribute WINE cannot sue WINE (or WINE users) for patent infringement. - It is compatible with the Apache 2.0 license, meaning that there is an even bigger pool of source code to draw from. - It helps ensure that companies cannot prevent people from modifying the source code by providing them explicit legal rights to change the code in these circumstances, and requiring information to allow users to change it. - For LGPL only, It makes 100% sure that GPL+linking exception and LGPL can be combined legally in all jurisdictions by merging them (which is essentially the only real difference, barring slightly different wording in the v2.1 of LGPL vs v2. of GPL) - It prevents patent agreements where only some people are protected. - It provides a mechanism for first-time accidental violations to be 'cured' more easily - ... and lots of other minor changes to improve the validity of the legal status of the license. snip So as you can see, (L)GPL version 3 has a lot of benefits. It also has broad support (excluding Linus of course, who I must point out objects only to a single clause in the license that can be resolved by adding an extra permission, as GPLv3 permits), including strong corporate backing (e.g. IBM, Red Hat, MySQL, Sun, even Novell). As one of the projects that Microsoft would most like to destroy, the added protections in this updated version of the license would seem even more valuable. Kind regards, Ian Macfarlane ps: As a last note to Damjan - all GPL versions have been considered both radical and political when they were released. In retrospect, the protections that they provided have been considered invaluable.
Re: WWN license issue
For what it's worth, I would prefer, in general, if it were at least GPLv2 or later, but considering that this is just a newsletter and not source code, I don't care that much :) To be honest, I think this it makes more sense under a Creative Commons license (probably the simple Creative Commons Attribution one). All the old ones at least should be changed to point to the GPLv2 license however, even if it is GPL2+ rather than GPL2-only. On 1/15/08, Jeremy Newman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'll patch it so it points to the GPL v2 licence, unless someone feels there is a reason it needs to be v3. Zachary Goldberg wrote: On Jan 15, 2008 9:58 AM, Ian Macfarlane [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At the bottom of each WWN issue (for example, the latest http://www.winehq.org/?issue=339) is the text: All Kernel Cousin issues and summaries are copyright their original authors, and distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2.0. However, it links to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt which of course is now the GPLv3 license text. Perhaps the text should change to say version 3 (or perhaps version 2+), or to the old archived GPLv2 license (IMO the former two options are preferable). for the record: I have no personal preference on the license. Whatever the WineHQ admins decide on the issue is fine with me.
WWN license issue
At the bottom of each WWN issue (for example, the latest http://www.winehq.org/?issue=339) is the text: All Kernel Cousin issues and summaries are copyright their original authors, and distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2.0. However, it links to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt which of course is now the GPLv3 license text. Perhaps the text should change to say version 3 (or perhaps version 2+), or to the old archived GPLv2 license (IMO the former two options are preferable).
AMD release developer tools with DX10 support
I hope this is useful for testing DX10 stuff: Snippet: [AMD] has updated its range of game programming tools, adding in DirectX 10 support to its popular suite http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41904 Ian
Re: Should Wine move to LGPL 3?
I've been meaning to ask about this since (L)GPL3 was released. The version 3 of the (L)GPL license has numerous benefits: - It's much more legally sound in the rest of the world (IMO one of the most important factors about the new license) - numerous reasons for this e.g. referencing WIPO rather than US laws. - It has an explicit patent agreement (really an extension of the above - (L)GPLv2 has an implicit patent agreement, but this is only valid in the US) - this means that people who contribute to and/or distribute WINE cannot sue WINE (or WINE users) for patent infringement. - It is compatible with the Apache 2.0 license, meaning that there is an even bigger pool of source code to draw from. - It helps ensure that companies cannot prevent people from modifying the source code by providing them explicit legal rights to change the code in these circumstances, and requiring information to allow users to change it. - For LGPL only, It makes 100% sure that GPL+linking exception and LGPL can be combined legally in all jurisdictions by merging them (which is essentially the only real difference, barring slightly different wording in the v2.1 of LGPL vs v2. of GPL) - It prevents patent agreements where only some people are protected. - It provides a mechanism for first-time accidental violations to be 'cured' more easily - ... and lots of other minor changes to improve the validity of the legal status of the license. There are some points not directly related to the license itself that might be of interest: - Samba has decided to become GPL3+ only, as they want the added protections provided by the license. WINE and Samba seem like projects that may potentially wish to share code (a very quick search brings up articles like this http://www.winehq.org/?issue=272), and if WINE sticks to supporting GPLv2+ rather than GPLv3+, then WINE will no longer be able to integrate Samba code. - Solaris may go GPLv3, another potentially useful repository of code to draw from that would not be possible under GPLv2. So as you can see, (L)GPL version 3 has a lot of benefits. It also has broad support (excluding Linus of course, who I must point out objects only to a single clause in the license that can be resolved by adding an extra permission, as GPLv3 permits), including strong corporate backing (e.g. IBM, Red Hat, MySQL, Sun, even Novell). As one of the projects that Microsoft would most like to destroy, the added protections in this updated version of the license would seem even more valuable. Kind regards, Ian Macfarlane ps: As a last note to Damjan - all GPL versions have been considered both radical and political when they were released. In retrospect, the protections that they provided have been considered invaluable.
The Alky Project
The Inquirer has an interesting article about something called the Alky Project which claims to have initial support for DirectX 10 on Windows XP (and possibly other operating systems). The Inquirer article is here (it links to a number of bits of info about the project): http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39095 They've released some sample DirectX 10 DLL files here: http://fallingleafsystems.com/site_media/preview.zip which they claim support at least one of the DirectX 10 demos fairly well (there's a readme in the zip, which is small, only 824k). I see that some person with an interest in WINE has already asked about this, to make sure they're not ripping off WINE, and they've responded with some details (including a bit of code) here: http://www.fallingleafsystems.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12 Just posting this in case any developers haven't seen this yet and would like to know about it - sorry if it's just repeating stuff you already know, but I couldn't find anything in wine.devel about it. Best wishes Ian Macfarlane (I'm not affiliated with any of the stuff mentioned in this email)
HLSL2GLSL
ATI has released software called HLSL2GLSL which converts D3D9 High Level Shader Language (HLSL) into the OpenGL equivalent GLSL. It's open source, and appears to be under a BSD license, so may be possible to integrate into WINE (I'm not sure if it's old or new BSD license). The source code is here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/hlsl2glsl Press releases and news about it are here: http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/11/10/hlsl2glsl/index.php http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35742 Hope this is of interest, Regards, Ian
HLSL2GLSL
ATI has released software called HLSL2GLSL which converts D3D9 High Level Shader Language (HLSL) into the OpenGL equivalent GLSL. It's open source, and appears to be under a BSD license, so may be possible to integrate into WINE (I'm not sure if it's old or new BSD license). The source code is here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/hlsl2glsl Press releases and news about it are here: http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/11/10/hlsl2glsl/index.php http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35742 Hope this is of interest, Regards, Ian ps: Sorry if this comes through twice - I didn't subscribe before sending this the first time and it looks like it didn't get through.
