Re: Commercial support
If they would have wanted some contact, that would have done it long time agoMore than that, if they'd like to have Windows API support on Linux, they could have done it (and still could do) much easier, than it's done now at Wine. (Like they did with Frontpage for Apache). But it could be also a revenue for MS to produce such a API-for-Linux and as current messages get out from Redmond, with some reconciliation with the Open Source community, chances may be for some interest. Mmmhh, there is Bill Hilf and Martin Taylor which are the Linux guys at MS But contacting MS should be made only after a decision (voting) of this list. gslink wrote: IBM does very well know the existents of Wine (they even acknowledged that by themselves lately), but may very well not support it, because of inter-relation with MS. As of now (just a guess), they don't want to get into more hot water right now Would it be to the advantage of Microsoft to have Wine succeed? They have given Apple much support and at every class for the past several years the instructors have had a copy of Linux on every machine. A very good case can be made for Microsoft supporting Wine especially since the RH secure kernel came via NSA and may very well become a DOD standard. Perhaps Wine should formally contact Microsoft. -- Regards Signer: Eddy Nigg Company: StartCom Linux at www.startcom.org MediaHost at www.mediahost.org Skype: startcom Phone: +1.213.341.0390 Import StartCom Public CA smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: [wine] Re: Commercial support
On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 10:19:55AM +1000, Troy Rollo wrote: On 5/7/05, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I really suggest we adhere to KISS - Keep It Simple. In any case, the difficulty you have here is that anything you do that sets a barrier against the bad guys is also likely to set a barrier against the good guys. ... If you ask the question how can the WINE project stop some random company X from exploiting the situation unfairly, then perhaps hoops is a good idea. If you ask the question how can the WINE project get the maximum possible benefit from this, then hoops may not be a good idea, since the WINE project's interests lie in the largest possible pool of suppliers of services. (Sorry about jumping in at the tail end of this discussion.) I say that we should accept all good-faith requests for inclusion after a posting on wine-devel or a patch against the website on wine-patches. Of course, the page should have a disclaimer such as Inclusion on this list does not constitute endorsement by WineHQ, its sponsors, or any Wine developer. I hope someone will visit the websites once in a while, and post another patch if the linked page obviously has nothing to do with Wine. If the list gets big enough that it needs to be sorted, we could order it by lines-of-code-contributed, as suggested. Alternately, we could order the list by the provider's net operating income (aka Income from Operations?) during their previous fiscal year, and stick everyone who can't/won't provide financial information at the end, alphabetically. This wouldn't obligate anyone to pay anything, of course, but it would seperate the serious *commercial* support (companies or individuals who pay atention to their own financial statements) from organizations that would be less prepared to deal with a lot of new business. However, both of these ideas are just things to think about when the list gets longer. -- David Lee Lambert (also [EMAIL PROTECTED])cell ph# 586-873-8813 PGP key at http://www.cse.msu.edu/~lamber45/newmail.htm#GPGKey
Re: [Fwd: Re: Commercial support]
On Tue, 10 May 2005 11:02, StartCom Ltd. wrote: Or maybe just because of it, there is a need for commercial support, or somebody might need that support. If it would be running, by just clicking on the executable, no support is really needed, at least not for standard applications. IBM does very well know the existents of Wine (they even acknowledged that by themselves lately), but may very well not support it, because of inter-relation with MS. As of now (just a guess), they don't want to get into more hot water right now I can verify that from a private conversation I had with an IBM employee last year at the local LUG's installfest. He informed me that because IBM has this sort of relationship with Microsoft, they are not free to get involved in anything that would make use of the MS Windows knowledge they have gained from that relationship. Stands to reason. But it's a pity. Wesley Parish gslink wrote: Go to the Wine HQ site and click on applications database. If you need more applications check the listed links. This is a problem with every development effort and nobody is blaming anybody. The larger the effort the worse it gets. This is probably the worst problem both Microsoft and IBM have with code. If you change anything in Wine something somewhere will probably quit running. This is simply the price of progress. My comment, and it is not a criticism, is that Wine still has rough edges. Eventually these will go away but for now, you can't simply load Wine into Linux and blindly start loading in applications. The more complex the application the more likely it needs setup. As versions progress setup procedures change and as a result things quit running. Microsoft Office doesn't run without setup and neither do many of the older games such as Alice or Rune. Even things like Warcraft come and go. This is not a criticism it is just the way things are and that is why I think it is too early to start thinking about commercial support. What somebody needs to do now is to get a relationship with IBM similar to the one that Eclipse has. IBM has a problem currently because there is no native Lotus Notes client for Linux. Wine could easily solve this problem. I talked to some of the marketing managers in IBM and most had never heard of Wine. The IBM development labs are currently starting to develop this native client. If IBM could use Wine it could save them money and sueing Wine is one thing sueing IBM is another. -- Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish - Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui? You ask, what is the most important thing? Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.
Re: Commercial support
IBM does very well know the existents of Wine (they even acknowledged that by themselves lately), but may very well not support it, because of inter-relation with MS. As of now (just a guess), they don't want to get into more hot water right now Would it be to the advantage of Microsoft to have Wine succeed? They have given Apple much support and at every class for the past several years the instructors have had a copy of Linux on every machine. A very good case can be made for Microsoft supporting Wine especially since the RH secure kernel came via NSA and may very well become a DOD standard. Perhaps Wine should formally contact Microsoft.
Re: Commercial support
On 5/10/05, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And on the out come of this discussion, read the entirety of this thread and apply bays theorem and a result will soon follow. http://psych.rice.edu/online_stat/chapter5/probability.html While it's very nice of you to send me to a 10 page explanation on a topic I already know something about, I really don't have the time to read it just so I'm enlightened by some inner knowledge you think I will gain. Care to explain what it is that you are trying to say here? Please do work out the math for me. Shachar That I give up, I have voiced my humble opinion on this subject and it's time to move on. Cheers, Tom
Re: Commercial support
StartCom Ltd. wrote: If they would have wanted some contact, that would have done it long time agoMore than that, if they'd like to have Windows API support on Linux, they could have done it (and still could do) much easier, than it's done now at Wine. (Like they did with Frontpage for Apache). But it could be also a revenue for MS to produce such a API-for-Linux and as current messages get out from Redmond, with some reconciliation with the Open Source community, chances may be for some interest. Mmmhh, there is Bill Hilf and Martin Taylor which are the Linux guys at MS But contacting MS should be made only after a decision (voting) of this list. gslink wrote: IBM does very well know the existents of Wine (they even acknowledged that by themselves lately), but may very well not support it, because of inter-relation with MS. As of now (just a guess), they don't want to get into more hot water right now Would it be to the advantage of Microsoft to have Wine succeed? They have given Apple much support and at every class for the past several years the instructors have had a copy of Linux on every machine. A very good case can be made for Microsoft supporting Wine especially since the RH secure kernel came via NSA and may very well become a DOD standard. Perhaps Wine should formally contact Microsoft. Now we are getting all the ideas on the table. I agree.
Commercial support
I wonder if it isn't a little early to consider the entire issue of commercial support. Most programs do not run under Wine without some sort of setup and things written to XP standards don't run at all. The project hasn't gotten to the 1.0 level yet. The project is coming along very well and sometime in the future will reach a 1.0 level. Might it not be time to consider things like this when the project has progressed a little further. I believe the project could better spend this effort publicizing Wine to groups such as the Smalltalk community. It could be a great help there and in other communities like it. The more involvement the faster Wine will reach the 1.0 level.
Commercial support
I wouldn't worry about anyone but Microsoft stealing Wine. In order to develop Wine you must be an expert C++ programmer. That requires an enormous amount of work and thieves are usually lazy. A new teacher came to the master. I have developed some new techniques that make teaching much better. How can I prevent other teachers from stealing them? Your worry is needless, replied the master. If your techniques are any good you will have to force others to use them. With that the master threw an eraser at him. The same can be said about Wine and Microsoft.
Re: Commercial support
Hi, On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 07:19:31AM -0400, gslink wrote: I wouldn't worry about anyone but Microsoft stealing Wine. In order to develop Wine you must be an expert C++ programmer. That requires an enormous amount of work and thieves are usually lazy. Maybe you wouldn't worry, but I'd bet a sizeable number of Wine programmers sure as hell do. Wine has become a very useful and big piece of software, and the bigger and more successful a software becomes, the more likely it gets misappropriated (i.e. making use of its code without giving back improvements). We've already had some corner cases (I won't mention names here, but many people probably know it anyway), and you could bet that Wine would have found relatively widespread abusive use if there hadn't been an LGPL change. And the fact that thieves are usually lazy is the very reason why people add foreign (debugged and working) code to their program... Adapting is often much easier than writing from scratch on your own. Andreas Mohr
Re: Commercial support
gslink schreef: I wonder if it isn't a little early to consider the entire issue of commercial support. Most programs do not run under Wine without some sort of setup and things written to XP standards don't run at all. Not (really) to butt in here, especially since I have never used XP and can't speak on it, but most programs do not run under Wine without some sort of setup? It disturbs me when people make generalizations like that. All right, yes, if there are 5 million Windows programs in existence, and 4 million of them do not run, then this is technically true-- but if out of the million that do run, 80% of them fall into the most commonly used category for 95% of migrating Windows users, then it isn't *really* true. The plain fact is, we don't really know that much about real-world usage patterns, except that most everybody needs IE for one reason or another, and Quicktime (ditto), a large proportion of people use Office and Outlook, and many of those need Access. Aside from that, do we really know how much call there is for many of these programs (not games) that don't run? And if a program that very few really use doesn't run, does that count-- or rather, *should* that count towards saying something like most programs do not run? Some things may never run (too proprietary, too old, pick your poison). Some things may run, but may not be truly needed (either because they're Windows-specific, like certain utilities, or so simple that the native version is commonly used, like notepad). So if notepad (which no one really needs) runs, but The Sims (which, being one of the most popular games ever, can be presumed to be desired by a lot of people) never will, how can one generalize about what runs and what doesn't? Does it matter if most programs do not run, if the majority of programs that users want/need do, or vice-versa? On this basis, how is one to judge when the 1.0 level has been attained? I understand that there is a roadmap that lists certain technical requirements before the program can be so versioned, but obviously, such a versioning may mean something very different to users (who are in many respects the reason that a specifically 1.0 version is necessary at all). It's not as if this magic number will necessarily suddenly ensure that most programs will run (which is probably what a user would expect), much less ensure that most programs that most users value would necessarily run out-of-the-box. So what is the benefit of holding off on listing supporters or contributors until such time as Wine is ready? Will Wine ever actually be ready, given that it's always aiming at a moving target? Who is this prospective list of supporters aimed at? If me, the end-user (whether I'm an individual or a business), I must say I'd be more impressed with knowing who's helping *now* rather than who helped after all the hard work was done. The categories what would make sense and be of use to me if I saw such a listing on winehq would be: Financial supporters (donations of whatever, possibly subscribed-- can the Wine Project be registered as a not for profit business? that would make it a charitable donation from the company, which 1) it is and 2) would be tax-deductible): You need money (who doesn't?), and I certainly will regard positively any company that just gives you some; Development supporters (companies who provide code or subsidize an employee to provide code): obviously you'd have to decide how much code (if one or more employees was not specifically designated to give X hours of time to Wine per X period of time), but since I would imagine that any such company would be concerned with a specific issue, rather than general ones, it might not be too hard to determine whether a listing or a special thanks to would be in order for any given case (i.e., if a company provided code just once, but that one bit of code was essential in solving problems further down the road, that would be a special thanks to situation). Both (needs a better word, obviously, but generally meaning those who provide both financial and development support). I'd also be able to understand Permanent supporters (like Codeweavers) and Time-period based supporters (Monthly sounds good, but Quarterly would work for me as well. Yearly is too long). Basically, I'd just want to know who gave what, when. This assumes of course that this big show is aimed at me in the first place. But then again, if it's aimed at some more official investor-type party, then you might as well just produce some kind of quarterly report and distribute it at meetings and conferences. Which is actually not a bad idea, either. For what it's worth, Holly
Re: Commercial support
Andreas Mohr wrote: Hi, On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 07:19:31AM -0400, gslink wrote: I wouldn't worry about anyone but Microsoft stealing Wine. In order to develop Wine you must be an expert C++ programmer. That requires an enormous amount of work and thieves are usually lazy. Maybe you wouldn't worry, but I'd bet a sizeable number of Wine programmers sure as hell do. Wine has become a very useful and big piece of software, and the bigger and more successful a software becomes, the more likely it gets misappropriated (i.e. making use of its code without giving back improvements). We've already had some corner cases (I won't mention names here, but many people probably know it anyway), and you could bet that Wine would have found relatively widespread abusive use if there hadn't been an LGPL change. And the fact that thieves are usually lazy is the very reason why people add foreign (debugged and working) code to their program... Adapting is often much easier than writing from scratch on your own. Andreas Mohr All that you say is quite true but I still think that the main enemy of Wine is Microsoft. Microsoft will eventually attempt to destroy Wine because only they are threatened by it. There was an LGPL change true but did that change stop anyone from stealing Wine? I seriously doubt it because what would happen if someone stole the library? Wine would need to hunt up some rather obscure program and prove from the binary that Wine code was stolen. This sort of thing is unlikely to happen because it requires too much education and work on the part of the thief. If you don't believe me try including Wine or the library in another program and getting the result to work correctly. You will have to figure out what the Wine code is doing first and that is hard work. Besides, there is no reasonable way to keep Wine from being incorporated in another product as long as the license is followed and who would want to. If others believe theft to be a problem then I suggest looking at and DEALING with the recording industry. The startup recording artist has the same problems as Wine and the recording industry banded together to be a very effective counter. They and the film industry are the only ones who might be able to counter Microsoft. Wine would be well advised not to leave Microsoft out of their calculations because my biggest fear is still a suit charging Wine with stealing all the code and the idea from Microsoft. In such a case merit has nothing to do with it.
Re: Commercial support
I recently took the list of applications from headquarters that are listed as running properly and found that many of these are available for little cost. I bought a few and tried to run them. Not a one ran as is from the box. I was able to get all of them to run with some trouble. One big problem I see with Wine is that there is no good testing. As versions progress things quit running and the author has no way of knowing. I have no good solution for this problem but I suspect that it needs attention. It is, of course, part of the documentation problem. It is not in the nature of programmers to document their work.
Re: Commercial support
On 5/9/05, gslink [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I recently took the list of applications from headquarters that are listed as running properly and found that many of these are available for little cost. I bought a few and tried to run them. Not a one ran as is from the box. I was able to get all of them to run with some trouble. One big problem I see with Wine is that there is no good testing. As versions progress things quit running and the author has no way of knowing. I have no good solution for this problem but I suspect that it needs attention. It is, of course, part of the documentation problem. It is not in the nature of programmers to document their work. Where would this list be? As of now there is no list of applications we try to keep working with every released snapshot. So developers are not required to check their changes against certain applications. What we do have is a large set of small test applications we run after changes. Paul
Re: Commercial support
Paul van Schayck wrote: On 5/9/05, gslink [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I recently took the list of applications from headquarters that are listed as running properly and found that many of these are available for little cost. I bought a few and tried to run them. Not a one ran as is from the box. I was able to get all of them to run with some trouble. One big problem I see with Wine is that there is no good testing. As versions progress things quit running and the author has no way of knowing. I have no good solution for this problem but I suspect that it needs attention. It is, of course, part of the documentation problem. It is not in the nature of programmers to document their work. Where would this list be? As of now there is no list of applications we try to keep working with every released snapshot. So developers are not required to check their changes against certain applications. What we do have is a large set of small test applications we run after changes. Paul Go to the Wine HQ site and click on applications database. If you need more applications check the listed links. This is a problem with every development effort and nobody is blaming anybody. The larger the effort the worse it gets. This is probably the worst problem both Microsoft and IBM have with code. If you change anything in Wine something somewhere will probably quit running. This is simply the price of progress. My comment, and it is not a criticism, is that Wine still has rough edges. Eventually these will go away but for now, you can't simply load Wine into Linux and blindly start loading in applications. The more complex the application the more likely it needs setup. As versions progress setup procedures change and as a result things quit running. Microsoft Office doesn't run without setup and neither do many of the older games such as Alice or Rune. Even things like Warcraft come and go. This is not a criticism it is just the way things are and that is why I think it is too early to start thinking about commercial support. What somebody needs to do now is to get a relationship with IBM similar to the one that Eclipse has. IBM has a problem currently because there is no native Lotus Notes client for Linux. Wine could easily solve this problem. I talked to some of the marketing managers in IBM and most had never heard of Wine. The IBM development labs are currently starting to develop this native client. If IBM could use Wine it could save them money and sueing Wine is one thing sueing IBM is another.
Re: Commercial support
On Monday 09 May 2005 16:11, you wrote: Paul van Schayck wrote: Where would this list be? As of now there is no list of applications we try to keep working with every released snapshot. [...] Go to the Wine HQ site and click on applications database. I think Paul wanted to know the subset of AppDB entries that one might wish be checked as part of the tagging process. I'd suggest that this metadata should be stored within AppDB, perhaps as the user-rating, or as an external keyword: SNAPSHOT_TEST_APP for example. [...] If you change anything in Wine something somewhere will probably quit running. We live in an imperfect world, so could well be true. But such breakages should (in an ideal world) be picked up and fixed. Changes are trying to implement new functionality, so if apps break as a result, then the patch is broken in some sense. The issue is about timescales, both with discovery and fixing the problems. I guess both will depend about how much developers care about the broken applications or the way in which they're broken. (this is where having application-level regression testing would be handy ;^) [...] The more complex the application the more likely it needs setup. As versions progress setup procedures change and as a result things quit running. Microsoft Office doesn't run without setup and neither do many of the older games such as Alice or Rune. I think this is a transitional effect. Once we get a 0.9 release, configuration should become more stable. What somebody needs to do now is to get a relationship with IBM similar to the one that Eclipse has. IBM has a problem currently because there is no native Lotus Notes client for Linux. Wine could easily solve this problem. I talked to some of the marketing managers in IBM and most had never heard of Wine. The IBM development labs are currently starting to develop this native client. If IBM could use Wine it could save them money and sueing Wine is one thing sueing IBM is another. Rumour has it (i.e. I can't put my finger on the source) that IBM do use Wine internally. Their marketing people may not know this, though. Cheers, Paul. pgphKqeqLZh8h.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Commercial support
On 5/7/05, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is actually a very good point in favor of not charging money at all. If you charge money, you create obligation. That's the way the legal system works. If you do not, you can easily delist any known LGPL offender. It could be looked at as a minimum donation request, and any funds raised should go to the WPF. If that doesn't convince you, then try this for size. If we do charge 10K/yr, Lingnu will not be listed there. It's simply not worth it for me. If ANYONE is going to be listed there, then, it will be some huge company, with very little actual Wine involvement. Being as it is that Wine would like the commercial vendors listed too, I think that's a lose-lose. Don't you? I believe giving away the only resource that winehq.org has for generating revenue for the WPF is insane. The way it is now we have a pay-pal account for donations and this is the only way any funds make it into this account. I think we should explore ways to raise money for future Wineconf's and other worth while expenditures. While 10k/yr may be a high target 100/yr is a bare minimum at best. Or do you really think that Lingnu is going to hold back code from Wine? No I don't, I never have and as as Ive already said before I believe everyone in this discussion is responsible and supporters of OSS. About what will happen if a rouge company shows up? I for see winehq.org setting up a page like PearPC and asking the community for help. But some people here think we should have trust and faith in people and not be pessimistic like myself. http://starport.dnsalias.net/index.php?show=articleid=352 And on the out come of this discussion, read the entirety of this thread and apply bays theorem and a result will soon follow. http://psych.rice.edu/online_stat/chapter5/probability.html Cheers, Tom
Re: Commercial support
Paul Millar wrote: On Monday 09 May 2005 16:11, you wrote: Paul van Schayck wrote: Where would this list be? As of now there is no list of applications we try to keep working with every released snapshot. [...] Go to the Wine HQ site and click on applications database. I think Paul wanted to know the subset of AppDB entries that one might wish be checked as part of the tagging process. I'd suggest that this metadata should be stored within AppDB, perhaps as the user-rating, or as an external keyword: SNAPSHOT_TEST_APP for example. [...] If you change anything in Wine something somewhere will probably quit running. We live in an imperfect world, so could well be true. But such breakages should (in an ideal world) be picked up and fixed. Changes are trying to implement new functionality, so if apps break as a result, then the patch is broken in some sense. The issue is about timescales, both with discovery and fixing the problems. I guess both will depend about how much developers care about the broken applications or the way in which they're broken. (this is where having application-level regression testing would be handy ;^) [...] The more complex the application the more likely it needs setup. As versions progress setup procedures change and as a result things quit running. Microsoft Office doesn't run without setup and neither do many of the older games such as Alice or Rune. I think this is a transitional effect. Once we get a 0.9 release, configuration should become more stable. What somebody needs to do now is to get a relationship with IBM similar to the one that Eclipse has. IBM has a problem currently because there is no native Lotus Notes client for Linux. Wine could easily solve this problem. I talked to some of the marketing managers in IBM and most had never heard of Wine. The IBM development labs are currently starting to develop this native client. If IBM could use Wine it could save them money and sueing Wine is one thing sueing IBM is another. Rumour has it (i.e. I can't put my finger on the source) that IBM do use Wine internally. Their marketing people may not know this, though. Cheers, Paul. You say it better than I. I agree. I think Wine is headed correctly. Attention is being paid to a test suite and as the interface becomes more stable then the quirks of some of these programs can be ironed out. That is exactly the way things should be working but let's not forget many if not most applications cannot now be run without some setup and the necessary setup may be undocumented. At best the setup is different from a setup under Windows. By the way, since Watson marketing has run IBM. If marketing doesn't know about it it doesn't exist. That is one of the keys to IBM success so it must be correct.
[Fwd: Re: Commercial support]
Or maybe just because of it, there is a need for commercial support, or somebody might need that support. If it would be running, by just clicking on the executable, no support is really needed, at least not for standard applications. IBM does very well know the existents of Wine (they even acknowledged that by themselves lately), but may very well not support it, because of inter-relation with MS. As of now (just a guess), they don't want to get into more hot water right now gslink wrote: Go to the Wine HQ site and click on applications database. If you need more applications check the listed links. This is a problem with every development effort and nobody is blaming anybody. The larger the effort the worse it gets. This is probably the worst problem both Microsoft and IBM have with code. If you change anything in Wine something somewhere will probably quit running. This is simply the price of progress. My comment, and it is not a criticism, is that Wine still has rough edges. Eventually these will go away but for now, you can't simply load Wine into Linux and blindly start loading in applications. The more complex the application the more likely it needs setup. As versions progress setup procedures change and as a result things quit running. Microsoft Office doesn't run without setup and neither do many of the older games such as Alice or Rune. Even things like Warcraft come and go. This is not a criticism it is just the way things are and that is why I think it is too early to start thinking about commercial support. What somebody needs to do now is to get a relationship with IBM similar to the one that Eclipse has. IBM has a problem currently because there is no native Lotus Notes client for Linux. Wine could easily solve this problem. I talked to some of the marketing managers in IBM and most had never heard of Wine. The IBM development labs are currently starting to develop this native client. If IBM could use Wine it could save them money and sueing Wine is one thing sueing IBM is another. -- Regards Signer: Eddy Nigg Company: StartCom Linux at www.startcom.org MediaHost at www.mediahost.org Skype: startcom Phone: +1.213.341.0390 Import StartCom Public CA smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Commercial support
Tom Wickline wrote: On 5/7/05, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is actually a very good point in favor of not charging money at all. If you charge money, you create obligation. That's the way the legal system works. If you do not, you can easily delist any known LGPL offender. It could be looked at as a minimum donation request, and any funds raised should go to the WPF. Or it COULD be looked on as a commercial transaction. They pay money, you provide ad space. If this goes to court, who's going to pick up the legal costs? Besides, what court will accept a compulsory voluntary donation theory? If you want to delist violators, make sure you either sign them up on a contract (expensive) or not take money from them. I believe giving away the only resource that winehq.org has for generating revenue for the WPF is insane. I don't know. It seems that WPF is doing sort of ok without this, and that wine at large is doing ok without the WPF. Having published commercial support is important for wine to do better, which is the real goal here. Not WPF. I think we should explore ways to raise money for future Wineconf's and other worth while expenditures. While 10k/yr may be a high target 100/yr is a bare minimum at best. Go ahead. It's just that entering a legal obligation with commercial companies we don't trust, and without a contract, is a bad idea in my very humble opinion. Or do you really think that Lingnu is going to hold back code from Wine? No I don't, I never have and as as Ive already said before I believe everyone in this discussion is responsible and supporters of OSS. But you are thinking of asking for an amount of money Lingnu will not pay, which means Lingnu loses (no visibility) and Wine loses (one less company that CAN provide support, will donate changes back, but is not listed). A good deal is one which is win-win, not lose-lose. Let's consider what we have so far: 10K/yr - lose lose 100/yr - win-lose (Lingnu doesn't mind paying 100/yr, but WPF will get, at best, 1000$ out of this, not enough for anything, and you can no longer easily threaten with delisting in case someone doesn't play fair. Can you imagine the PearPC page still listing CherryOS as a commercial support, even after they have been found to be violating the GPL?). I think 0/yr is a win-win in the short term. Maybe when wine is more attractive we can have a different optimum (I somewhat doubt it). Also, don't under estimate specific sponsorship of wineconfs. This year's wineconf was over sponsored - we had more companies willing to sponsor than actual money requirements. About what will happen if a rouge company shows up? I for see winehq.org setting up a page like PearPC and asking the community for help. But how will charging people money help here? It will make your position somewhat more serious because of 1 above. Also, don't forget that any company willing to pay for ad space is also a company who has an interest in other companies not violating the Wine copyright. In short, I think you worry about this at the wrong place. But some people here think we should have trust and faith in people and not be pessimistic like myself. http://starport.dnsalias.net/index.php?show=articleid=352 And on the out come of this discussion, read the entirety of this thread and apply bays theorem and a result will soon follow. http://psych.rice.edu/online_stat/chapter5/probability.html While it's very nice of you to send me to a 10 page explanation on a topic I already know something about, I really don't have the time to read it just so I'm enlightened by some inner knowledge you think I will gain. Care to explain what it is that you are trying to say here? Please do work out the math for me. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html
Re: Commercial support
On 5/7/05, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I really suggest we adhere to KISS - Keep It Simple. On Sat, 7 May 2005 22:17, Tom Wickline wrote: And have nothing in place if a rouge company fails to adhear to the LGPL!!! Actually, rouge companies quite like the LGPL because it fits with their philosophy, although they tend to prefer the GPL, those pinkos. Rogue companies on the other hand... In any case, the difficulty you have here is that anything you do that sets a barrier against the bad guys is also likely to set a barrier against the good guys. One of the reasons (if not the major reason) I avoid Microsoft products now is because of their increasingly intrusive approach to license enforcement. All my Microsoft stuff was fully paid for, but I wasn't interested in being treated like a crook or even a potential crook at the outset, nor was I interested in jumping through increasingly annoying hoops. In fact if they hadn't gotten so damned annoying about it I probably still wouldn't be using Linux or contributing to WINE. If you ask the question how can the WINE project stop some random company X from exploiting the situation unfairly, then perhaps hoops is a good idea. If you ask the question how can the WINE project get the maximum possible benefit from this, then hoops may not be a good idea, since the WINE project's interests lie in the largest possible pool of suppliers of services. You may get some who exploit or abuse the situation without giving back, but the goal is (IMO) not minimisation of exploitation, but maximisation of benefit. These are not necessarily complimentary goals - often you have to wear some amount of exploitation by others to get the maximum benefit for yourself.
Re: Commercial support
Tom Wickline wrote: On 5/3/05, Dimitrie O. Paun [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, I think being inclusive is better. However, I also think that we need to pick the rules carefully so we don't set up a bad precedent when half the world will be using Wine :). So here is what I propose: 1. The list should be capped to n entries (n=50, 100?) 2. It should be kept up to date, and refreshed at least yearly 3. Any list has an order by definition, this one should be ranked by how much each company benefits the project. Hello All, Here is my proposal... 1) a token monetary fee of around $10,000 per year. 2) at least 1,000 lines of code or some major contributions to documentation. 3) a link back to winehq.org from there site and not twenty pages into there site. 4) a clear and thought out business plan (there company goal) and have links to it. 5) they agree to be bound by the LGPL license and to give back all code changes that apply under this license. 6) anyone found in contempt of the LGPL will be banned from all future winehq.org listings. 7) if a banned party wants re-instatement they must pay a fine of $25,000 and post a written apology to the community for there actions. 8) each party should contribute to the Wine party fund to fund future Wineconf's. Tom Wickline Before going into elaborate schemes here, I suggest that everyone consider the following points: 1. Sure, commercial companies have something to gain from being listed on the WineHQ page, but so does Wine. 2. If I, as a business owner, am going to be charged more than a token amount, I had better get a receipt. Otherwise the actual cost to me is about double the amount I pay Wine. I don't mind if it's 50$ or 100$, but more then that, and I'd want it as a deductible expense. As Wine is not a legally existing body, however, there is no one to issue said receipt. 3. On the flip side, if Wine is going to be receiving such amounts, it will have to report them to some tax authority. Who will do the reporting, and how? 4. If we are going to go into 8 steps programs, a contract had better be involved. Creating one costs money. Keeping it enforced costs money. This money, a.k.a. overhead, had better come from somewhere. 5. More importantly than money, keeping the contract and money matters enforced requires human supervision. This means that someone who could really spend their time hacking wine will need to make sure that the commercial companies adhere to our standards. I really suggest we adhere to KISS - Keep It Simple. I actually liked the hackers rating idea. If a company is well known among the wine hackers, they'll vote for it. If not, list it alphabetically at the end of the former list. As I said before, the token cost was meant mostly to make sure that the company is still alive, but as Andrew said, sending an email once a year to make sure someone responds also works, and does not get anyone in trouble with any tax authority. Having said all of that, I think I'll actually go with Brian's idea. Let him phrase the criteria. Unlike me, he does not have a commercial interest in Wine. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html
Re: Commercial support
On Samstag 07 Mai 2005 08:39, Shachar Shemesh wrote: I really suggest we adhere to KISS - Keep It Simple. I actually liked the hackers rating idea. If a company is well known among the wine hackers, they'll vote for it. If not, list it alphabetically at the end of the former list. While I certainly don't think that's a bad idea, I am still a bit concerned that this puts too much emphasis on code contributions alone, while the bunch of other stuff that seems also very important to me (docs, training, helping out users, whatever) might get a bit forgotten. However, that's certainly a question of how the hackers' rating would be implemented, not a conceptual problem. As I said before, the token cost was meant mostly to make sure that the company is still alive, but as Andrew said, sending an email once a year to make sure someone responds also works, and does not get anyone in trouble with any tax authority. Yep, I do think that should suffice. Having said all of that, I think I'll actually go with Brian's idea. Let him phrase the criteria. Unlike me, he does not have a commercial interest in Wine. I'd be much in favor of that, too. Cheers, David pgpberGqp294P.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Commercial support
On 5/7/05, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Before going into elaborate schemes here, I suggest that everyone consider the following points: 1. Sure, commercial companies have something to gain from being listed on the WineHQ page, but so does Wine. So this is a mute point. 2. If I, as a business owner, am going to be charged more than a token amount, I had better get a receipt. You should save all your small receipt's they will add up come tax time. Otherwise the actual cost to me is about double the amount I pay Wine. I don't mind if it's 50$ or 100$, but more then that, and I'd want it as a deductible expense. As Wine is not a legally existing body, however, there is no one to issue said receipt. The Wine Party Fund is listed as a non-profit charity in the state of Minnesota so the listing fee could be a minimum donation to this fund. and as its a non-profit you should have the ability to write this off. 3. On the flip side, if Wine is going to be receiving such amounts, it will have to report them to some tax authority. Who will do the reporting, and how? WPF is a non-profit... 4. If we are going to go into 8 steps programs, a contract had better be involved. Creating one costs money. Keeping it enforced costs money. This money, a.k.a. overhead, had better come from somewhere. The kind donations to be listed.. 5. More importantly than money, keeping the contract and money matters enforced requires human supervision. This means that someone who could really spend their time hacking wine will need to make sure that the commercial companies adhere to our standards. Okay, now we get to my concerns. Who is going to do this even if the listing fee is a poultry $100.00 ? There sure as heck wont be any money to in force anything. I really suggest we adhere to KISS - Keep It Simple. And have nothing in place if a rouge company fails to adhear to the LGPL!!! I actually liked the hackers rating idea. If a company is well known among the wine hackers, they'll vote for it. If not, list it alphabetically at the end of the former list. As I said before, the token cost was meant mostly to make sure that the company is still alive, but as Andrew said, sending an email once a year to make sure someone responds also works, and does not get anyone in trouble with any tax authority. Having said all of that, I think I'll actually go with Brian's idea. Let him phrase the criteria. Unlike me, he does not have a commercial interest in Wine. I say we have a *OPEN* vote on this. Democracy at its best... Tom Wickline Shachar
Re: Commercial support
9 million hits a month != visits 509874 visits != http://www.winehq.org/site/support pages visits (as a fact, it isn't even listed under the top 30, not surprising) ~ 2000 pages visits != referrers referrers != sales.. But of course, $ 100 per year is a nice price, but than everybody can. Tom Wickline wrote: I have a question and I feel its important to ask. Lets for example say I start a small company and I have a Wine based product. And I refuse to give back any changes that I make to the source. What are you going to do in a case like this? And I'm sure I can afford $8.00 a month for a nice listing here! Winehq.org receives between 7 and 9 million hits a month, so I hope this $8.00 is a wise investment for my future company... http://www.winehq.org/webalizer/ Tom Wickline -- Regards Signer: Eddy Nigg Company: StartCom Linux at www.startcom.org MediaHost at www.mediahost.org Skype: startcom Phone: +1.213.341.0390 Import StartCom Public CA smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Commercial support
On 5/7/05, Tom Wickline [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The Wine Party Fund is listed as a non-profit charity in the state of Minnesota When did this happen? I'm pretty sure it's not unless it some how happened over the past few months. We've discussed it before, but always decided the amount of paperwork isn't worth it. I'm sure Steven can tell us how bad it sucks. With regard to the rest of the page, I took a stab at starting it the other night. Including a list of support companies is just one aspect of it. Anyway, I fully intend to list some companies that can do support and include a few paragraphs discussing that process. I'm not going to tell them it'll cost $10,000 either, or even $100. We're a free software development community and that implies some level of trust. Plus, if you want to support Wine (or, IMHO, any piece of software) you're *(@ing crazy. If anyone thinks that sucks, then feel free to beat me to it and write the page. -Brian
Re: Commercial support
On 5/7/05, MediaHost (TM) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 9 million hits a month != visits 509874 visits != http://www.winehq.org/site/support pages visits (as a fact, it isn't even listed under the top 30, not surprising) There is no link to this support page from our main page, and im sure there is a large number of people who don't even know it exist. So if there is better linking to this page it should receive allot more hits. At any rate you didn't answer the question of what will happen if wine is ever hijacked. But I guess it could happen even without this referral page, if it does ever happen lets just hope its not by someone listed here. But of course, $ 100 per year is a nice price, but than everybody can. Yea a nice referral for only $8.00 a month... hold on I just read Brian's mail and now the cost has just went to $0.00 sign up now at this everyday low price folks.. To bad this project will never have sponsoring like blender3d.. http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Sponsoring_prospectus.58.0.html Tom
Re: Commercial support
On 5/7/05, Brian Vincent [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When did this happen? I thought Jer set it up when he set up the pay-pal account, I guess not, my bad. We're a free software development community and that implies some level of trust. I can only think of the quote that's accredited to PT Barnum.. :D Tom
Re: Commercial support
Tom Wickline wrote: On 5/7/05, Brian Vincent [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When did this happen? I thought Jer set it up when he set up the pay-pal account, I guess not, my bad. I registered 'The Wine Project' as a 'Doing Business As' name. Basically, this means that I have a legal right to also use that name in Minnesota; that gave me the right to create a bank account with that name. There's no official corporation around that; it's just me, and that's where the paypal money goes (bwahahahah, you're all fools to trust me grin). Last year, I spent most of the money in that account on travel subsidies. This year, we didn't get as many requests, so we're fairly flush. I need to square a few expenses; like the 100 EUR we promised for the students party fund, so I don't have an exact amount; probably $1200 or so. We've debated in the past how best to spend that money; I've come to believe that the best use of it is on Wineconf, in whatever ways make sense. Cheers, Jeremy
Re: Commercial support
Tom Wickline wrote: At any rate you didn't answer the question of what will happen if wine is ever hijacked. But I guess it could happen even without this referral page, if it does ever happen lets just hope its not by someone listed here. This is actually a very good point in favor of not charging money at all. If you charge money, you create obligation. That's the way the legal system works. If you do not, you can easily delist any known LGPL offender. Having said that, I think the focus on code contributions to wine may be exaggerated. Looking from what we know right now, there are just three companies that have the capability to change wine to fit a specific client. Of these three, CodeWeavers is the only one who is doing any significant work on wine on a regular basis. They may be some freelance work going on as well, but it seems to me most of it is for Code Weavers anyways. But of course, $ 100 per year is a nice price, but than everybody can. Yea a nice referral for only $8.00 a month... hold on I just read Brian's mail and now the cost has just went to $0.00 sign up now at this everyday low price folks.. Then again, it seems we have heard on this thread alone of three different companies that either package wine or play with it's deployment. As we learned at wineconf, not having these companies listed is a major hurdle for commercial Wine adoption, which is where money for more wine improvement ultimately comes from. This does tell us that worrying about LGPL violation should not be too serious. It seems that most commercial wine deployers don't mess with the code anyways. Now, you might say that I'm biased because I have an interest. That would certainly be true. After all, if David's company is listed, and they get much more business then they do today, as there are only three companies that can provide second tier support, I obviously stand to win. The thing is, that so does WineHQ. I don't think I have to convince anyone that I give back what I do (and sometimes fight Alexandre ferociously about getting it included), and so does Dimi. As for CodeWeavers, well, I don't think anyone involved with Wine can raise anything against them. So, ultimately, we ALL get to win from getting more money into Wine, and charging an amount that will actually allow companies to get listed (and, yes, between zero and 100$/yr, zero is more flexibile to us in getting violators delisted without mucking with the legal system). If that doesn't convince you, then try this for size. If we do charge 10K/yr, Lingnu will not be listed there. It's simply not worth it for me. If ANYONE is going to be listed there, then, it will be some huge company, with very little actual Wine involvement. Being as it is that Wine would like the commercial vendors listed too, I think that's a lose-lose. Don't you? Or do you really think that Lingnu is going to hold back code from Wine? To bad this project will never have sponsoring like blender3d.. http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Sponsoring_prospectus.58.0.html As far as I know, blender was sponsored by it's clients, not by the people who sold services for it. That is what, I believe, most free software will eventually gravitate towards. Wine, however, is not there yet. In fact, many wine hackers hardly even run wine. Tom Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html
Re: Commercial support
Tom Wickline wrote: On 5/5/05, Jakob Eriksson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, Are you saying I'm a Nazi for putting what you would consider a high price tag on a listing? All I'm saying is the referral by No. It was Andreas Mohr who first made the reference to the Third Reich. I just pointed out that we now have made it to the Godwin point... Well if you want to consider me as a Nazi for standing up and saying that a listing is worth more than what you consider as being fair then I guess ill have to be called such names. No... the Godwin reference is used on Usenet to cool a discussion before it goes into flaming mode. So if I offended you, or Andreas, or anyone else I'm deeply sorry. To go back to the original discussion, I agree that there should be _something_ holding back the free loaders. Not sure exactly what, so I'm monitoring the Commercial support thread to see what the consensus ends up as. regards, Jakob
Re: Commercial support
Jakob Eriksson wrote: To go back to the original discussion, I agree that there should be _something_ holding back the free loaders. Not sure exactly what, so I'm monitoring the "Commercial support" thread to see what the consensus ends up as. Sponsoring Wine, is maybe the right way to get some publicity for a wine-supporting-entity and for Wine to get some funds in. This also will not affect the reputation of Wine and is not a recommendation of Wine itself, of any such entity. Advertisements is the other alternative, which exists already on the website (CrossOver?)... Look, if you setup a commercial support list, you have to stand to itI still think it's a problematic objectit's not about money, but reputation and maybe even legal complications And another point: I saw on this list the numbers going around, like $2000 and $1 for being listed. I thought in the beginning, its a joke, but some of you took this seriouslyWell, to make for you some simple calculations: Having 20 % set aside for advertisement efforts of an overall marketing budget of, lets say 10 % of sales, than you need to have this "listing on winehq" lead to $ 500,000 worth of sales I think that's far away from reality, friends! regards, Jakob -- Regards Signer: Eddy Nigg Company: StartCom Linux at www.startcom.org MediaHost at www.mediahost.org Skype: startcom Phone: +1.213.341.0390 Import StartCom Public CA smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Commercial support
On 5/5/05, Jakob Eriksson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I invoke Godwins law. As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. So, Are you saying I'm a Nazi for putting what you would consider a high price tag on a listing? All I'm saying is the referral by winehq.org is worth more than the pocket change that you want to give.. If the majority here want to give away this space that's fine with me.. I'm just saying a listings true value is worth more than what you want to pay.. And winehq.org should receive something closer to the true market value as a $100.00 is a joke. How about this ... Listing price is $10,000 and for each line of code that your or your identity sends to wine-patches and is excepted into the Wine tree you receive $1.00 credit. So 10,000 lines = free listing, No code = $10,000 in US funds. Or the free ride that some of you expect? Tom Wickline
Re: Commercial support
Andreas Mohr wrote: Hi, On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 02:57:17PM +0200, Boaz Harrosh wrote: Tom Wickline wrote: Here is my proposal... Must I shoot myself now or can I do it next week? :) . Indeed. I had the impression that the fascist Drittes Reich was long gone, but upon reading those lines... I invoke Godwins law. As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Re: Commercial support
Rather than set threshholds on capacity, there might be a tiered arrangement whereby anybody can get a class D listing for nothing. Class C, B and A listings would cost $200, $1000, and $1. The page would then be ranked by listing class, and within listing class by geography. How do you want to determine the different classes. If I pay 10.000$ I get listed on the Premium list? Or is it more that If I have more employees working on wine i pay more for being a official supporter? I am not sure if this is what the winhq should aim at. On the market it could work I do not know because I do not know how great the exsisting demand is. But we should be careful with lists. Every list is a official recommandation. And the wine Project should take care that these People do honestly contribute to wine. A general fee for all is better IMHO. We could make a fee 0f 200$ link the List to a profile where the Companies stats is listed. There we could make a Rubrik like the Company donated over X $ to the project. That would state the closeness and the support. You move up in the list if you collect enough points by producing code, patches and donation. Wich you can check on the profile. How bout that? 3) a link back to winehq.org from there site and not twenty pages into there site. We could make a Button like Offical Wine support for the Commercial supporter. This button can be placed on the homepage. 7) if a banned party wants re-instatement they must pay a fine of $25,000 and post a written apology to the community for there actions. It would be better if a official Wine Support Company signs a contract where it agrees to an penalty payment if violating the contract. The violation fee could be differ to the severity of the violation. This sounds serious to me. Because this is a two way road. We promise the company to treat them right and they ensure us to be honest on the project. Of course a contract is a bit more demanding then the simple list but they become the OFFICIAL Partner for wine. I think that is more worth then a fee. Greetings Peter
Re: Commercial support
Tom Wickline wrote: On 5/5/05, Jakob Eriksson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I invoke Godwins law. As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. So, Are you saying I'm a Nazi for putting what you would consider a high price tag on a listing? All I'm saying is the referral by No. It was Andreas Mohr who first made the reference to the Third Reich. I just pointed out that we now have made it to the Godwin point... regards, Jakob
Re: Commercial support
On 5/5/05, Peter Kovacs [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A general fee for all is better IMHO. We could make a fee 0f 200$ link the List to a profile where the Companies stats is listed. There we could make a Rubrik like the Company donated over X $ to the project. That would state the closeness and the support. You move up in the list if you collect enough points by producing code, patches and donation. Wich you can check on the profile. How bout that? This to me sounds reasonable enough. 3) a link back to winehq.org from there site and not twenty pages into there site. We could make a Button like Offical Wine support for the Commercial supporter. This button can be placed on the homepage. Sounds good.. 7) if a banned party wants re-instatement they must pay a fine of $25,000 and post a written apology to the community for there actions. It would be better if a official Wine Support Company signs a contract where it agrees to an penalty payment if violating the contract. The violation fee could be differ to the severity of the violation. This sounds serious to me. Because this is a two way road. We promise the company to treat them right and they ensure us to be honest on the project. Of course a contract is a bit more demanding then the simple list but they become the OFFICIAL Partner for wine. I think that is more worth then a fee. This is the main area where I'm most concerned, what will we as a group do if someone ask for a listing and we grand a listing and they in return don't give back to this project in any way other than the $100 or $200 that we ask for up front? I know Ive not gave a great deal to this project but it saddens me to think we don't or wont have any mechanism in place to deal with identity's that don't follow the LGPL. So before we jump into this we should take a couple steps back and look at what were going to do in a worse case scenario. And have a plan of action in case such a occurrence should arise. Most people want to trust there fellow man but as we all know this does not always work. I would also like to say thank you for actually putting some thought into your reply! Cheers, Tom Greetings Peter
Re: Commercial support
On 5/5/05, Jakob Eriksson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, Are you saying I'm a Nazi for putting what you would consider a high price tag on a listing? All I'm saying is the referral by No. It was Andreas Mohr who first made the reference to the Third Reich. I just pointed out that we now have made it to the Godwin point... Well if you want to consider me as a Nazi for standing up and saying that a listing is worth more than what you consider as being fair then I guess ill have to be called such names. The names that come to mind here is Free Loaders Cheap skates Sponges Cheers, Tom Wickline regards, Jakob
Re: Commercial support
Hi, I think that everybody should have access to give support. If you put some rules on companies have to start to think if they want to do that. In order to make a difference to companies that do something and don't they can enter their number of Employe who work on wine, Projects worked on or patches submitted. Anyway what winehq decides in this matter the list has to be maintained by someone who is not involved with any company on the List to be neutral. He will check the Accurance of the list and control the rules that are set off. And he should have the power to put companies of the list. He should be responsible to this list or something so he again gets controlled... At best my thoughts are rough but it should be not to easy to cheat on this Wine Support Company List... Greetings Peter Am Dienstag, den 03.05.2005, 23:18 +0200 schrieb [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Tue, 03 May 2005 22:22:34 +0200, Jeremy White [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now you can take my $0.02 and add EUR $1.48, and you have a cup of coffee (and you really will, because you don't have to factor in tax, and that's so nice) :-/ LOL ! bEUR $1.48 /b eh? I have long suspected the existance of eurodolloars , now the cats out of the bag. We'ed probably be as well adopting the US constitution while we're about it. It makes more sense that the wooly non-constitution they are trying to ram down our throats at the moment. Still I am sure we can rely on the French to reject it . Votez NON !!
Re: Commercial support
LOL ! bEUR $1.48 /b eh? I have long suspected the existance of eurodolloars , now the cats out of the bag. We'ed probably be as well adopting the US constitution while we're about it. It makes more sense that the wooly non-constitution they are trying to ram down our throats at the moment. Still I am sure we can rely on the French to reject it . Votez NON !! Jay Leno in response to Colin Powell's deadline for an Iraqi constitution: They can take ours. After all, we aren't using it... :) bye Fabi
Re: Commercial support
On 5/3/05, Dimitrie O. Paun [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, I think being inclusive is better. However, I also think that we need to pick the rules carefully so we don't set up a bad precedent when half the world will be using Wine :). So here is what I propose: 1. The list should be capped to n entries (n=50, 100?) 2. It should be kept up to date, and refreshed at least yearly 3. Any list has an order by definition, this one should be ranked by how much each company benefits the project. Hello All, Here is my proposal... 1) a token monetary fee of around $10,000 per year. 2) at least 1,000 lines of code or some major contributions to documentation. 3) a link back to winehq.org from there site and not twenty pages into there site. 4) a clear and thought out business plan (there company goal) and have links to it. 5) they agree to be bound by the LGPL license and to give back all code changes that apply under this license. 6) anyone found in contempt of the LGPL will be banned from all future winehq.org listings. 7) if a banned party wants re-instatement they must pay a fine of $25,000 and post a written apology to the community for there actions. 8) each party should contribute to the Wine party fund to fund future Wineconf's. Tom Wickline
Re: Commercial support
Tom Wickline wrote: Here is my proposal... Must I shoot myself now or can I do it next week? :) .
Re: Commercial support
On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 07:33:53AM -0400, Tom Wickline wrote: 1) a token monetary fee of around $10,000 per year. I was thinking more like $100, to help out CW with hosting. At 10K most companies will shy away, and we don't want that. We want more people there, not fewer. This is not money for advertising. We can drop it altogether AFAIAC, I don't think it's important. On the other hand, if CW want a bit of help with the server, I think it's fair that we all chip in. -- Dimi.
Re: Commercial support
Hi, On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 02:57:17PM +0200, Boaz Harrosh wrote: Tom Wickline wrote: Here is my proposal... Must I shoot myself now or can I do it next week? :) . Indeed. I had the impression that the fascist Drittes Reich was long gone, but upon reading those lines... I believe that any serious amount of money for Wine support listing is a mistake, since it keeps out some people. (and let's not even get started about a punishment tax!) Requesting a trivial amount of money (= $200) might be good to restrict the listing to those people who REALLY intend to provide good support, but even that is debatable. Andreas (fetching his gun now ;)
Re: Commercial support
On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 03:22:34PM -0500, Jeremy White wrote: site should be open to anyone that requests to be listed there, and that it should be in alphabetical order. Name recognition matters. In fact, for Open Source companies it may be the only thing they have to work with. As such, I think the order is important. I'm afraid that going the alphabetical order way we're sending the wrong message: Don't bother sending patches in, just choose a company name that sorts high. And ultimately, this is bad for Wine. Also, this seems to be blown out of proportion: none of the possible candidates have a problem with a ranked list. In fact, I think 3 out of 4 supported the idea :) Why not just do that? -- Dimi.
Re: Commercial support
On 5/4/05, Dimitrie O. Paun [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 07:33:53AM -0400, Tom Wickline wrote: 1) a token monetary fee of around $10,000 per year. I was thinking more like $100, to help out CW with hosting. At 10K most companies will shy away, and we don't want that. We want more people there, not fewer. I'm only trying to weed out the rif-raf and $100.00 can be had by almost anyone on this planet. Is the hosting cost open? If helping with hosting is the primary reason for the money we should first find the total cost and then go from there? This is not money for advertising. We can drop it altogether AFAIAC, I don't think it's important. On the other hand, if CW want a bit of help with the server, I think it's fair that we all chip in. As I see it its far better than advertising its winehq.org signing off on these future listings. And if a fly-by-night company comes by and gives a few pence and gets a listing and then directs there customers to there listing as being a creditable identity. Winehq.org is at stake of getting a nice shiner (black-eye) if they turn out to be a unrespectful company. So the question is what is this projects reputation / name really worth ??? when you find the sum put that as the listing fee. I'm in no way saying that anyone in this discussion is unrespectful! I'm just saying that these people do exist and are out there and we should think about that now rather than later not when its too late. Tom -- Dimi.
Re: Commercial support
On Wed, 4 May 2005 22:35, Andreas Mohr wrote: I believe that any serious amount of money for Wine support listing is a mistake, since it keeps out some people. Indeed. It seems to me that it would be better if anybody who has the *capacity* to provide services could be listed - even if it's after hours or weekend work. If lone coders have the opportunity to get paid for writing code that goes into WINE, then they may well develop that into a business that allows them to work on WINE full time. In a similar vein, it should not be limited to companies - there is no intrinsic reason why a customer should necessarily prefer to deal with a company over an individual, and there are several reasons why they may prefer the reverse. Rather than set threshholds on capacity, there might be a tiered arrangement whereby anybody can get a class D listing for nothing. Class C, B and A listings would cost $200, $1000, and $1. The page would then be ranked by listing class, and within listing class by geography. That way you can satisfy the needs of people who want some assurance of capacity, and the needs of people who want somebody local or convenient. The interests of the project are in building up an industry, based around the projects, and the more participants there are the greater the viability of the industry as a whole. If the page goes ahead, I suspect many more people would be willing to take what business comes their way - and if somebody lacks the capacity to service the business coming their way they can always either refer people, or as I advise people who cannot handle the volume of business coming in and don't want to take on staff - raise prices.
Commercial support
Hi Jer, When you finally get around to adding a commercial support to Winehq, I would love this list to include: Lingnu Open Source Consulting, web at http://www.lingnu.com. On a different note. There is a page at http://www.winehq.org/site/support, but there does not appear to be any link to it. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html
Re: Commercial support
Shachar Shemesh schrieb am 03.05.2005 um 09:19 Uhr: When you finally get around to adding a commercial support to Winehq, I would love this list to include: Lingnu Open Source Consulting, web at http://www.lingnu.com. Following that proposal, I'd also ask you to add ITOMIG, at http://www.itomig.de Thanks, David
Re: Commercial support
Hi All, I'm not sure, if winehq should be a platform for advertisements of commercial services (except maybe codeweavers), otherwise there will be a very long list there, very soon. And who to include and who not? Are there such plans to include such links on the website, except for community based support? Shachar Shemesh wrote: Hi Jer, When you finally get around to adding a "commercial support" to Winehq, I would love this list to include: "Lingnu Open Source Consulting", web at http://www.lingnu.com. On a different note. There is a page at http://www.winehq.org/site/support, but there does not appear to be any link to it. Shachar -- Regards Signer: Eddy Nigg Company: StartCom Linux at www.startcom.org MediaHost at www.mediahost.org Skype: startcom Phone: +1.213.341.0390 Import StartCom Public CA smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Commercial support
MediaHost (TM) wrote: Hi All, I'm not sure, if winehq should be a platform for advertisements of commercial services (except maybe codeweavers), otherwise there will be a very long list there, very soon. That's good, in principle. The problem brought up during wineconf was that the lack of commercial support is viewed by potential deployers as a minus, making wine a dangerous technology. Saying here is a list of companies willing to take your money and give you support is actually a good thing for Wine. And who to include and who not? Ah, there you have hit a more serious problem. For example, there is no doubt that CodeWeavers has been both a^Hthe major wine driving force, AND a financial sponsor. However, if we don't allow other companies room, we are unfair towards the other companies, towards CodeWeavers (why should they continue to be practically the only ones carrying the load), and towards Wine (and we don't want Wine to become a CodeWeavers subproject, do we?). I can suggest a simple rule to go by, as to whether to include a company or not. In order to be included, a company has to show that it has contributed (via it's employees or directly) a non-trivial patch to wine. We can even limit it to in the past year. At the moment, I believe only three companies pass that criteria (CodeWeavers, Lingnu, and Dimi's company, whose name he has successfully kept secret, for some reason). Alternatively, we can have several lists. A Gold list, which includes companies that have the means to produce fixes to wine itself if necessary (as judged by the above criteria), and a normal list, which merely includes anyone who declares that they are willing to provide commercial support. I would have suggested a nominal fee (i.e. - a $50 contribution to the wine fund per year, or some such thing) from the last list. On the up side, it allows us to know the company is still active in this field. On the down side, I don't think we have the resources to start tracking who paid and who didn't. I could even suggest a platinum list, which would include any company that employs the equivalent of a full time Wine developer or up. Of course, this currently only includes CodeWeavers. The idea I'm trying to push here is that we can do such a list, so long as we keep clear objective criterias for who gets listed where. Are there such plans to include such links on the website, except for community based support? That's what we talked about over wineconf. It seems that such a list gives credibility to a project, and as such is a wanted thing. A company considering wine deployment is more likely to accept wine if they know they can get support for it. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html
Re: Commercial support
On Dienstag 03 Mai 2005 10:53, Shachar Shemesh wrote: And who to include and who not? [..] I can suggest a simple rule to go by, as to whether to include a company or not. In order to be included, a company has to show that it has contributed (via it's employees or directly) a non-trivial patch to wine. We can even limit it to in the past year. At the moment, I believe only three companies pass that criteria (CodeWeavers, Lingnu, and Dimi's company, whose name he has successfully kept secret, for some reason). I cannot say I am convinced this is a good rule to follow. First of all, maybe I got things wrong at wineconf, but I remember something like anyone who wants to be listed there should be being the last statement I heard in the lecture room. While it seems to me that the selection by code contribution as proposed would not be quite feasible (what exactly is a non-trivial patch?), I also think that there is a lot more to Wine than just code, starting from documentation, including stuff like donations, helping out on wine-users, or training (commercial or not) are important, too, and won't directly bring any code into the project - which does not make these things less valuable IMHO. So I'd suggest listing anyone who can prove he has contributed to Wine in whatever way - making a donation, having contributed code, whatever - , and let the customers decide whom to select for their particular problem. That said, I definetly think we could allow code contributors a sentence or two of space that describes their area of expertise in Wine (i.e. what part they contributed to), as this is certainly valuable information for customers, and good advertising for those companies. Cheers, David pgpx6dvAEzO3h.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Commercial support
David Gmbel wrote: I cannot say I am convinced this is a good rule to follow. First of all, maybe I got things wrong at wineconf, but I remember something like anyone who wants to be listed there should be being the last statement I heard in the lecture room. I'm actually in favor of this. I too think that having as many companies listed would be a good thing. While it seems to me that the selection by code contribution as proposed would not be quite feasible (what exactly is a non-trivial patch?), I also think that there is a lot more to Wine than just code, starting from documentation, including stuff like donations, helping out on wine-users, or training (commercial or not) are important, too, and won't directly bring any code into the project - which does not make these things less valuable IMHO. I agree, but I was really thinking about a different thing. Wine deployment based on existing solutions is different than a deployment that can actually change wine to solve problems. My suggestion was based on the assumption that a client would care to know that. I do think that everyone should be listed, though. So I'd suggest listing anyone who can prove he has contributed to Wine in whatever way - making a donation, having contributed code, whatever - , and let the customers decide whom to select for their particular problem. Agreed. I don't even mind listing EVERYONE, whether or not they contributed anything at all. My token monetary donation idea was based on past experience, where making a list too easy to include you and too easy to stay on it means that it becomes obsolete, and therefor not useful. We tried to run a list of consultants supporting Linux in Israel, and nobody uses it any more, for precisely that reason. Making a token donation once a year eliminates this problem (though it creates other problems, such as actually collecting the money). If, instead of money donation, we merely ask each company to reaffirm it belongs in the list once a year, that would work as well. That said, I definetly think we could allow code contributors a sentence or two of space that describes their area of expertise in Wine (i.e. what part they contributed to), as this is certainly valuable information for customers, and good advertising for those companies. Yep, that is definitely one way to do it. Cheers, David Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html
Re: Commercial support
I think support has nothing to do with submitting patches.but with giving support, if we are at it. Wine is going to play a major role by Linux Vendors, where support is the major income; it does it already now. Wine is integrated into migration plans quite tightly for applications with no alternative around. Now, a company giving support for wine should have enough experience and support personnel in both, Linux and Wine in order to qualify, if at all. But than again, the question remains, who to list!? Does submitting a patch qualify for better listing? I don't think there is any connection between them...coding is coding and support issues are something else But I prefer to not have any such list at all, something needing support for wine will find it David Gmbel wrote: On Dienstag 03 Mai 2005 10:53, Shachar Shemesh wrote: And who to include and who not? [..] I can suggest a simple rule to go by, as to whether to include a company or not. In order to be included, a company has to show that it has contributed (via it's employees or directly) a non-trivial patch to wine. We can even limit it to "in the past year". At the moment, I believe only three companies pass that criteria (CodeWeavers, Lingnu, and Dimi's company, whose name he has successfully kept secret, for some reason). I cannot say I am convinced this is a good rule to follow. First of all, maybe I got things wrong at wineconf, but I remember something like "anyone who wants to be listed there should be" being the last statement I heard in the lecture room. While it seems to me that the selection by code contribution as proposed would not be quite feasible (what exactly is a non-trivial patch?), I also think that there is a lot more to Wine than just code, starting from documentation, including stuff like donations, helping out on wine-users, or training (commercial or not) are important, too, and won't directly bring any code into the project - which does not make these things less valuable IMHO. So I'd suggest listing anyone who can prove he has contributed to Wine in whatever way - making a donation, having contributed code, whatever - , and let the customers decide whom to select for their particular problem. That said, I definetly think we could allow code contributors a sentence or two of space that describes their area of expertise in Wine (i.e. what part they contributed to), as this is certainly valuable information for customers, and good advertising for those companies. Cheers, David -- Regards Signer: Eddy Nigg Company: StartCom Linux at www.startcom.org MediaHost at www.mediahost.org Skype: startcom Phone: +1.213.341.0390 Import StartCom Public CA smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Commercial support
MediaHost (TM) wrote: Wine is going to play a major role by Linux Vendors, where support is the major income; it does it already now. Wine is integrated into migration plans quite tightly for applications with no alternative around. Now, a company giving support for wine should have enough experience and support personnel in both, Linux and Wine in order to qualify, if at all. I guess that would have been true, if Wine did not need so much work still. At the moment, I really don't see how you can give support for Wine without being able to work out areas where Wine is simply not good enough. There is no better way to show you can than to actually have done such a thing in the past, hence the patches suggestion. But than again, the question remains, who to list!? Does submitting a patch qualify for better listing? I don't think there is any connection between them...coding is coding and support issues are something else In my experience, you can solve 0% of enterprise support requests (which is what commercial support about) without doing some level of hacking on Wine. I'd love to hear Jeremy's input on that one, as they have MUCH more experience at it then we. It may be that it's just because we know how to hack wine that we resort to that. Then again, that does mean the customer gets a different level of support from companies that have wine hacking abilities and companies that don't. Either way, telling site visitors who can and who can't seems like useful information to me. But I prefer to not have any such list at all, something needing support for wine will find it But, as discussed at WineConf, not having such a list at all hurts wine, which is clearly not what we are trying to do. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html
Re: Commercial support
Shachar Shemesh wrote: MediaHost (TM) wrote: Wine is going to play a major role by Linux Vendors, where support is the major income; it does it already now. Wine is integrated into migration plans quite tightly for applications with no alternative around. Now, a company giving support for wine should have enough experience and support personnel in both, Linux and Wine in order to qualify, if at all. I guess that would have been true, if Wine did not need so much work still. At the moment, I really don't see how you can give support for Wine without being able to work out areas where Wine is simply not good enough. There is no better way to show you can than to actually have done such a thing in the past, hence the patches suggestion. I understand, that wine needs still way to go and development time is not the cheapest thing on earth (A way to get more patches in:-)). Your suggestion concerning patches might be half correct: To hack up wine for certain needs and applications is, in my opinion, not the only qualification needed, it's one of them...Now, if you submitted a patch before, doesn't mean, you can give serious support for wine enabled solutions That's why I said, it's a dangerous thing to post such a listwhy? To list anybody might work like a boomerang, if the listed entity is not capable of doing the job. This might be very counterproductive for wine and in effect make you look like a fool The intention is meant well, but still... And who is going to judge that issue?? Is money, little or much, the green card to winehq's supporting companies list?? Anyway, I see it as a problematic issue at largeand might do more harm than good But than again, the question remains, who to list!? Does submitting a patch qualify for better listing? I don't think there is any connection between them...coding is coding and support issues are something else In my experience, you can solve 0% of enterprise support requests (which is what commercial support about) without doing some level of hacking on Wine. I'd love to hear Jeremy's input on that one, as they have MUCH more experience at it then we. It may be that it's just because we know how to hack wine that we resort to that. Then again, that does mean the customer gets a different level of support from companies that have wine hacking abilities and companies that don't. Either way, telling site visitors who can and who can't seems like useful information to me. But I prefer to not have any such list at all, something needing support for wine will find it But, as discussed at WineConf, not having such a list at all hurts wine, which is clearly not what we are trying to do. Shachar -- Regards Signer: Eddy Nigg Company: StartCom Linux at www.startcom.org MediaHost at www.mediahost.org Skype: startcom Phone: +1.213.341.0390 Import StartCom Public CA smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Commercial support
Hi, On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 01:50:20PM +0300, MediaHost (TM) wrote: I think support has nothing to do with submitting patches.but with giving support, if we are at it. I have to disagree rather strongly. While Wine might get to a state where many people are going to use it and mere enduser support is needed, thus alleviating the need for patching knowledge at support companies, we want companies who CARE about good support and thus KNOW Wine in and out. Or at least they should know as much as being able to contribute some useful patches. IMHO writing some first Wine patches is not a skill issue, it's a time issue. If you're not a programmer, you are still able to spend a lot of time using and getting to know Wine, and once you've done that, writing a couple of (even simple) patches for the Wine environment will be quite easy. Bingo! You've got the entry ticket to publicly listed Wine support... But I prefer to not have any such list at all, something needing support for wine will find it Again rather strong disagreement. As discussed on wineconf2005, wine has a severe market acceptance/perception issue, thus having strong support options seems to be quite important. While a ranked list might not be the best way to represent support options, I think it allows companies such as Codeweavers which are obviously much more involved with Wine to properly represent their Wine knowledge level. Thus I'd be in favour of *something* like such a list. Andreas Mohr
Re: Commercial support
On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 13:33 +0200, Andreas Mohr wrote: But I prefer to not have any such list at all, something needing support for wine will,find it Again rather strong disagreement. As discussed on wineconf2005, wine has a severe market acceptance/perception issue, thus having strong support options seems to be quite important. While a ranked list might not be the best way to represent support options, I think it allows companies such as Codeweavers which are obviously much more involved with Wine to properly represent their Wine knowledge level. I think it is worthwhile to expand on the Samba Team's experience with commercial support lists. The primary experience is that such lists much be maintained, and current. For many years, our list was unmaintained, but over the last year we have had a new website maintainer, and at least companies that don't reply to e-mail are removed. We do not 'vet' our list, and we don't try to rank the providers. This avoids a number of issues (how would you rank them?), and this is a policy I support. We have a broad list of providers in many localities, and this does provide us a place to point users in need of paid help. I don't think it draws away from the 'top tier' providers, who distinguish themselves in the way they always have - by being relevant to their customers, and competing on their own best merits. Andrew Bartlett -- Andrew Bartletthttp://samba.org/~abartlet/ Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org Student Network Administrator, Hawker College http://hawkerc.net signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Commercial support
Andrew Bartlett wrote: I think it is worthwhile to expand on the Samba Team's experience with commercial support lists. The primary experience is that such lists much be maintained, and current. For many years, our list was unmaintained, but over the last year we have had a new website maintainer, and at least companies that don't reply to e-mail are removed. Hmm, similar to my refresh once a year idea. Who's in charge of making sure that the companies do still answer email? We do not 'vet' our list, and we don't try to rank the providers. This avoids a number of issues (how would you rank them?), and this is a policy I support. I guess the reason both Andreas and myself think it is a good idea to rank them has to do with the maturity of wine vs. Samba. While it is true that both Andreas and myself believe that our companies should be ranked high (and, at least for me, I also think that the company Andreas work for should be rated high, and even higher), it is also because we believe that this measurement is actually relevant to the service we sell. I am yet to encounter a program that just works on wine. Even if there are, they still enjoy a large amount of customizing and adapting. As such, there should be an advantage to companies that know how to do that. Almost all wine hacking done for clients are generally useful. Lingnu once produced a whole DLL due to a specific client support need (Unicows). This means that the people best situated to know who is who are the people who receive the patches. While I don't think other companies should not be listed at all, but the potential customers should be able to tell them apart. We have a broad list of providers in many localities, and this does provide us a place to point users in need of paid help. I don't think it draws away from the 'top tier' providers, who distinguish themselves in the way they always have - by being relevant to their customers, and competing on their own best merits. I guess neither Andreas nor myself see the way you can provide commercial support for Wine if you can't hack it. I would love to hear from such companies, though, what is their typical support scenario. Maybe it's me who is deluded here. Andrew Bartlett Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html
Re: Commercial support
On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 11:33:36AM +0200, David Gümbel wrote: So I'd suggest listing anyone who can prove he has contributed to Wine in whatever way - making a donation, having contributed code, whatever - , and let the customers decide whom to select for their particular problem. Yes, I think being inclusive is better. However, I also think that we need to pick the rules carefully so we don't set up a bad precedent when half the world will be using Wine :). So here is what I propose: 1. The list should be capped to n entries (n=50, 100?) 2. It should be kept up to date, and refreshed at least yearly 3. Any list has an order by definition, this one should be ranked by how much each company benefits the project. Notes: - Rule (1) doesn't mean much now, but it may in the future if we get flooded with requests for listing - Rule (2) seems everyone agrees with. I suggest a token monetary fee that should go towards hosting the WineHQ site. - Rule (3) is the most tricky of all. But please realise that we should be talking from the project's perspective here (we are talking about WineHQ site), not our own commercial perspective. It is fundamental that things are fair to encourage future cooperation, and that is the one and most important thing from the project POV. And yes, code contributions are not the only thing. Regardless, it is not difficult to rank. Here is what I suggest: * company makes a request for linking by submitting a patch to the appropriate page on wine-patches. If they don't know how to do that, they may ask someone for help, but the patch should be posted on the list before it can go in. * if there are any disagreements as to the proposed order, we can ask for a quick vote on the list. Each vote will include the rank the voter gives to the listings. An average of the vote should determine the rank. Please check out Wisdom of Crowds why this works very well. In any event, I don't think there is that much of a problem to come up with a ranking at the time being. -- Dimi.
Commercial Support
The point I wanted to make is, that only submitting patches or saying, "we give wine support", may hurt the wine project more than it helps: 1.) I didn't want to write this, so not to make this thread as an opportunity to make some self advertisement, but I need to explain: Linux Vendors are in fact solution and support providers. We ourselves (StartCom Linux) had the opportunity's to get a certain applications for a certain customers going, by "fixing" a few lines. This does not mean, that this fix was worth for the development efforts of wine. I prefer to let others doing this job better than we do... We do not maintain a wine source tree per se, nor do we checkout from CVS nor do we intend to do it anytime soon. We build and rather fix our current RPM from official releases and provide that to the customer. However, we very carefully monitor the wine devel list and know exactly what's going on (more or less) and are mostly up to date. Based on that informations we publish a new RPM's for our distributions or not. Therefor our efforts are not for the development of wine, but rather for the usability of the end user. 2.) Linux Support and solution issues are not only based on Wine. Wine is just one (important) application contributing to this effort. Now, a person or company listed in such a list, might be able to hack up a few patches, but might not be able to maintain a support level needed. Does that mean, that a patch submitting individual gives better support than a Linux Vendor with all the staff at hand? Having GOLD and SILVER listings makes that issue even more difficult(Shahar, I know you submitted some nice work for unicode support, but does that make you own wine or making you a better wine supporting company than others??) 3.) I think, if you want to advertise your services, setup a appropriate website and make your offerings. Maybe instead of a list there should be a reference to some google searches suggesting a queryI personally think, that the community based wine should stay that way and leave the commercial issues going their own way. Well, I hope I made my point and wont bother anymore concerning this issue. Hope that this input was useful and gave you some food for thoughts -- Regards Signer: Eddy Nigg Company: StartCom Linux at www.startcom.org MediaHost at www.mediahost.org Skype: startcom Phone: +1.213.341.0390 Import StartCom Public CA smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Commercial support
On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 09:02 -0400, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote: On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 11:33:36AM +0200, David Gmbel wrote: So I'd suggest listing anyone who can prove he has contributed to Wine in whatever way - making a donation, having contributed code, whatever - , and let the customers decide whom to select for their particular problem. Yes, I think being inclusive is better. However, I also think that we need to pick the rules carefully so we don't set up a bad precedent when half the world will be using Wine :). So here is what I propose: 1. The list should be capped to n entries (n=50, 100?) 2. It should be kept up to date, and refreshed at least yearly 3. Any list has an order by definition, this one should be ranked by how much each company benefits the project. Notes: - Rule (1) doesn't mean much now, but it may in the future if we get flooded with requests for listing - Rule (2) seems everyone agrees with. I suggest a token monetary fee that should go towards hosting the WineHQ site. I would advise strongly against setting up an implied contract for advertising, by accepting money. I strongly suggest a 'these people claim they can help with Wine' list, unsorted (except by locality or name), and certainly without a 'vote' system. Folks who are incompetent will soon show this to their clients in their own time, why should Wine mailing list be making a statements about companies to which most will not have had contact as a customer. Samba has a large support directory, and as has been commented it is probably also easier to support. I suggest dealing with the 'thundering hoards' question if you really get them. Andrew Bartlett -- Andrew Bartletthttp://samba.org/~abartlet/ Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org Student Network Administrator, Hawker College http://hawkerc.net signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Commercial support
Hi, On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 03:38:51PM +0300, Shachar Shemesh wrote: I guess the reason both Andreas and myself think it is a good idea to rank them has to do with the maturity of wine vs. Samba. While it is true that both Andreas and myself believe that our companies should be ranked high (and, at least for me, I also think that the company Andreas work for should be rated high, and even higher), it is also because we believe that this measurement is actually relevant to the service we sell. Indeed, the projects are quite different at the moment, thus I think that Wine support will inevitably require development knowledge for now. This will probably change, but most likely not within 2 or even 3 years. But while I certainly rate my company rather high, this is a personal rating only and doesn't have anything to do with Wine, since we're not in the Wine support business AT ALL ;-) (not even much in the Wine development business - that's just some side effects) Andreas Mohr
Re: Commercial support
On 5/3/05, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can suggest a simple rule to go by, as to whether to include a company or not. In order to be included, a company has to show that it has contributed (via it's employees or directly) a non-trivial patch to wine. We can even limit it to in the past year. At the moment, I At some point over the next few weeks I'll throw something together (feel free to beat me to it.) I don't think we need any criteria about contribuing to Wine or a platinum level. If you're crazy enough^H^H^H^H^H able to do commercial support then we should advertise it. There's plenty of companies who can do support without the knowledge to contribute. In fact, you could think of them offering support as their way of contributing. Support companies can also 'escalate' to someone else if coding is involved. Also, I'll bet we won't have to worry about the list being too big any time in the near future. Let's not worry about that now. A lot of names would be good. -Brian
Re: Commercial support
On Dienstag 03 Mai 2005 15:31, Andrew Bartlett wrote: Folks who are incompetent will soon show this to their clients in their own time, why should Wine mailing list be making a statements about companies to which most will not have had contact as a customer. ACK. Samba has a large support directory, and as has been commented it is probably also easier to support. I suggest dealing with the 'thundering hoards' question if you really get them. Before we start debating details that are maybe not even issues, why don't we run a Call for Listings here: Any company that would like to be listed should say so aloud here on wine-devel during, say, a week's time. Then we'll see if we are actually having trouble enforcing some list order or I'm still interested-mechanism. As things stand, the folks that have spoken up and demanded to be listed know each other personally, and at least while we're just talking about Condeweavers, LinGNU, Dimitrie and ITOMIG, I don't have a problem at all to be listed last (in fact I think that would be appropriate). Cheers, David pgpUfI5dYhcoJ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Commercial support
On Dienstag 03 Mai 2005 16:43, Brian Vincent wrote: On 5/3/05, Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can suggest a simple rule to go by, as to whether to include a company or not. In order to be included, a company has to show that it has contributed (via it's employees or directly) a non-trivial patch to wine. We can even limit it to in the past year. At the moment, I At some point over the next few weeks I'll throw something together (feel free to beat me to it.) Good! I don't think we need any criteria about contribuing to Wine or a platinum level. If you're crazy enough^H^H^H^H^H able to do commercial support then we should advertise it. There's plenty of companies who can do support without the knowledge to contribute. In fact, you could think of them offering support as their way of contributing. Support companies can also 'escalate' to someone else if coding is involved. Exactly. Also, I'll bet we won't have to worry about the list being too big any time in the near future. Let's not worry about that now. A lot of names would be good. I absolutely agree. Cheers, David pgpHaV9E3PDj2.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Commercial support
Oh, fine, start a flame war while I'm off travelling around Germany. grin In my not very humble opinion, I think that any commercial support section of the WineHQ web site should be open to anyone that requests to be listed there, and that it should be in alphabetical order. However, I think the list should be fairly simple with a link to full details. I do think that some reasonable pruning is fair; someone that is obviously trolling without any Wine credentials at all, or someone that falls off the map, for example, should get pruned. But it should be awfully hard to get kicked out, imo. Now you can take my $0.02 and add EUR $1.48, and you have a cup of coffee (and you really will, because you don't have to factor in tax, and that's so nice) :-/ Cheers, Jeremy
Re: Commercial support
On Tue, 03 May 2005 22:22:34 +0200, Jeremy White [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now you can take my $0.02 and add EUR $1.48, and you have a cup of coffee (and you really will, because you don't have to factor in tax, and that's so nice) :-/ LOL ! bEUR $1.48 /b eh? I have long suspected the existance of eurodolloars , now the cats out of the bag. We'ed probably be as well adopting the US constitution while we're about it. It makes more sense that the wooly non-constitution they are trying to ram down our throats at the moment. Still I am sure we can rely on the French to reject it . Votez NON !!
