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
