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My greatest success was giving up and just using a full windows VM under Parallels.

How's that OpenGL 4 support working out for you? Oh, you mean Parallels still only supports OpenGL 3.2 Core Profile? Sucks to be a paying customer.

I can't really see why you'd buy an iMac and run something other than OS-X on it. Apple hardware is nicely designed but it is overpriced, And it works well running OS-X but it's likely to be subpar running anything else. E.g. lots of people have pointed out that Macs have poor battery life running Windows in Boot Camp. That's because Apple do some clever stuff like run the keyboard and trackpad in SPI mode, not USB. But that only works in OS-X. In other OSs they might just run them in USB mode.

https://news.ycombinator.com/i...

If you want to run WIndows go to your favourite laptop/desktop OEM(s) and buy a machine/parts. It'll be cheaper than a Mac. If you want to run Linux go to your favourite OEM(s) and make sure all the parts have decent Linux support.

Now on my Mac I still occasionally need to run Visual Studio for Windows to build stuff. And for that there's Parallels Desktop. Parallels Desktop's Coherence mode where you can have Visual Studio running in a window on the same desktop as native Mac applications is a thing of beauty.

And it looks like they support it for Ubuntu virtual machines too -

http://kb.parallels.com/en/112...

iOS runs UNIX and you have absolutely no control over it.

OS X is officially a UNIX but as of the latest version you can't even use root to replace some of Apple's software with newer versions.

If you're referring to System Integrity Protection, then, if you want to replace some of Apple's software, feel free to disable System Integrity Protection. A bit of a painful process, but the setting persists, so you only have to do it once, unless you want to turn it back on once you're done and then turn it off again when you want to change one of the protected files.

(Pro tip for people running OS X under VMware Fusion: if you're going to be doing this, you'll probably want to increase the boot delay on your VM so that you have enough time to do the "boot to Recovery OS" dance. The Parallels folk don't require anything like that, apparently, but I haven't tried it with Parallels.)

If you just bought Parallels a few months ago, it must be version 8 or 9 (v9 was released on September 5, 2013 - a few months ago). Version 9 fully supports Mavericks, but we'll assume you don't have that because of your complaint. As for version 8, see this from the horse's mouth:

http://kb.parallels.com/en/117805

Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac

The latest update of Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac does support OS X Mavericks and is available to address the majority OS X Mavericks compatibility issues. There are some known issues such as USB devices assignment, limited multiple displays support.

Please make sure that you have the latest update by downloading it here.

Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac

Full OS X Mavericks feature set support in Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac.

If you just bought Parallels a few months ago, it must be version 8 or 9 (v9 was released on September 5, 2013 - a few months ago). Version 9 fully supports Mavericks, but we'll assume you don't have that because of your complaint. As for version 8, see this from the horse's mouth:

http://kb.parallels.com/en/117805

Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac

The latest update of Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac does support OS X Mavericks and is available to address the majority OS X Mavericks compatibility issues. There are some known issues such as USB devices assignment, limited multiple displays support.

Please make sure that you have the latest update by downloading it here.

Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac

Full OS X Mavericks feature set support in Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac.

OSX doesn't ship with a VM. The most popular VM for Apple is http://www.parallels.com/

This vulnerability is a variation of the long known CVE-2012-1823 vulnerability related to the CGI mode of PHP only in older Plesks. All currently supported versions of Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5, 10.x and 11.x, as well Parallels Plesk Automation, are not vulnerable. If a customer is using legacy, and a no longer supported version of Parallels Plesk Panel, they should upgrade to the latest version. For the legacy versions of Parallels Plesk Panel, we provided a suggested and unsupported workaround described in http://kb.parallels.com/en/113818.

Yes. Apple officially support Windows they created a free system for dual booting ( http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4818 ). There are a ton of good VM solutions http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/ being the most popular. If you just want to blow away OSX and install Linux or Windows that's easy as well.

Now tell me what you can do with MS Windows and or Linux you can't do with a Mac.

How about virtualization? How about terminal services? How about configuration management?

Virtualizing? Let's see. There'e VirtualBox, VMWare's Fusion 4, and Parallels. I don't have it setup right now but I'm going to try to use VirtualBox so I can run my dualboot Ubuntu installation in a virtual machine while running OSX. If that does not work then I'll try Fusion 4. OSX has terminal. Being based on FreeBSD many of the commands are the same as in Linux. Look at that, there's even Open Source configuration management software that runs on OSX.

Falcon

You obviously didn't understand what I was talking about *at all*. You mentioned VirtualBox, Fusion 4, and Parallels. Try running OS X in VirtualBox or Parallels without using a hacked up OSx86 version. Oh wait you can't. Try virtualizing more than two instances of OS X on the same server by any method without violating the EULA. Oh wait you can't. Try doing anything remotely useful with OS X and virtualization, the single most important and transformative technology in the IT world today. Oh wait you can't.

In response to my asking about terminal services, you respond "OSX has terminal". Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't even bother to do the five seconds of googling to find out. Terminal services refers to the ability to have one server host multiple remote login gui sessions, each with their own desktop and user settings. I refrained from calling it "Remote Desktop", because you'd probably come back with Apple Remote Desktop, misunderstanding the conversation yet again. ARD is just VNC with a few bells and whistles thrown in.

Now tell me what you can do with MS Windows and or Linux you can't do with a Mac.

How about virtualization? How about terminal services? How about configuration management?

Virtualizing? Let's see. There'e VirtualBox, VMWare's Fusion 4, and Parallels. I don't have it setup right now but I'm going to try to use VirtualBox so I can run my dualboot Ubuntu installation in a virtual machine while running OSX. If that does not work then I'll try Fusion 4. OSX has terminal. Being based on FreeBSD many of the commands are the same as in Linux. Look at that, there's even Open Source configuration management software that runs on OSX.

Falcon

Parallels with Windows costs $260. I could buy a Windows laptop for that much.

Yeah, you're wrong.

http://www.parallels.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_Camp_(software)

It seems many of you don't know (as did I until not so long ago) that Parallels, the virtualization folks of Mac fame, also do "Parallels Bare Metal" which is essentially a direct attack on VMWare's lunch money.

The Parallels Bare Metal 4 is near VMWare ESX 2.x functionality or so but the new Parallels Bare Metal 5 (which is now in beta) has pretty much most of the VMWare 3.x-4.x ESX/vSphere series features. Although it is much more command-line centric - which is good for some of us - and the procedures for converting physical and virtual machines from other vendors are quite different - which you simply have to learn and get used to (yes you can convert ESX/vSphere crap on-disk and via Parallels "importer" in-guest agent).

The thing comes with Windows, OSX and Linux management consoles ala the VMWare editions of old.

So for all of you out there who need to appease corporate demons with a commercial product with proper support arrangements etc, take a look.

I was quite pleasantly surprised and I am holding back any moves to vSphere 5 for many of my clients with the aim of deploying Parallels instead.

Oh and pricing: $499 per-host (no idiotic per-core or per-ram or per-disk nonsense here) for "Small Business" (which has everything you need really, even for big shops since you can script everything using their command line tools) or $999 for their "Standard" which comes with a wacky centralized automation/web-interface/event-ticket/delegation/who-knows-what-else management gizmo.

See those numbers and weep, oh vSphere 5 victims!

They also have a "Virtuozo" product that seems aimed at the VPS rental market.

One particular issue is web host control panels - of the major control panels (cPanel, DirectAdmin and Plesk), only DirectAdmin has IPv6 already, and many web hosts aren't willing to deploy a different control panel just to get to IPv6. Hence many websites simply can't go IPv6 easily until the ISP upgrades to the control panel, and in the case of cPanel, which is by far the most popular one, there is not even a roadmap date for v6. Same goes for Plesk apparently.

If you use cPanel, see http://forums.cpanel.net/f145/case-10334-make-cpanel-ipv6-compatible-35453.html and comment if you want to see IPv6.

If you use Plesk, see http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=102770

Still waiting on the mac version of directx

Here you go...

I don't know about VirtualBox, but Parallels have a bare metal virtualisation solution that runs on Apple Xserve hardware, and is capable of virtualising Mac OS X Server.

I could be wrong, but I'm under the impression that the gov loves Virtuozzo.

http://www.parallels.com/products/pvc45/

I use VirtualBox for building a test environment and it works very well. Also the graphics acceleration worked fine for the games that I tested with. Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme looks interesting, but the only "Certified hardware platform" is a HP Z800 Workstation, which costs $2000 to $5000. Add in $400 for the Parallels license and that gets to be a bit steep. Plus the announcer on the video sounds like he is trying to sell you a used car.

I use VirtualBox for building a test environment and it works very well. Also the graphics acceleration worked fine for the games that I tested with. Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme looks interesting, but the only "Certified hardware platform" is a HP Z800 Workstation, which costs $2000 to $5000. Add in $400 for the Parallels license and that gets to be a bit steep. Plus the announcer on the video sounds like he is trying to sell you a used car.

Does Parallels come with Windows?

Guest OS not included.

but the copy of VirtualBox that I own, from before MS bought Connectix, came with a valid Window 98 license

Connectix never made VirtualBox. You're probably thinking of Virtual PC, which did come with Windows.

http://vmware.com/

http://parallels.com/

http://virtualbox.org/

Take your pick, any one of them will run Windows 98 on Mac OS X.

The 13" MacBook Pro fits within your budget ($1199), has hardware virtualisation so can run any Intel-based operating system under VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop or Virtual Box
You don't get a hot-swap Ultrabay, but you probably don't really need the added complexity. It has a built-in 7-hour battery, has a built-in SD Card reader, has a built-in SuperDrive (Dual-layer DVD±RW, CD-RW) It doesn't have an option for a Floppy Drive from Apple, but any USB floppy will work with it (seriously, does anyone use them anymore? Even Windows doesn't need floppies to load drivers from during the initial install).
It doesn't have an option for a docking station from Apple, but it has all the ports on one side of the machine, rather than at the rear, so it's very easy to plug and unplug - I do this daily and don't miss not having a docking station. If you NEED a docking station, there's a 3rd party one from BookEndz

It has outstanding hardware build quality, comes with a fantastic development environment for free, and can run any of the open-source ones as well, can run Windows XP SP2+ natively on the bare metal, but who wants to reboot these days, so it'll run everything back to DOS in virtualisation. It will also open you up to a new user experience and a new operating environment that you may just end up liking. If you don't you format the drive and install Linux or Windows instead...

I got into computers because I could hack the BASIC games on an Apple ][+

Accessibility is king! But finding which thread to grab amidst the jumble of a modern GUI OS is tricky!!

I have just started playing with "Processing" and it seems to have a nice mix of understandable code and super powerful libraries to take advantage of: cross platform, modern hardware and complex meta-behaviours that we might expect.

As well, I am "sandboxing" with "Parallels" on top of OSX and I have found it to be very stable. (It allows virtualization of Windows flavours, OS X & varieties of linuxen concurrently) The images can be booted Read Only or not. Creating a bulletproof, clean starting environment is what kids(and productions) need, and virtualization images might be part of this.

I'm new to virtualization, but it feels like the future to me. Since I have taught in hands-on Lab settings I think this is a better solution for a shared use lab than straight up disk imaging... It would allow week by week, class by class customization of the Boot Image, and changes could always be rolled back.

The current versions of Parallels Desktop and Parallels Workstation run on 64-bit architecture computers if a 32-bit primary OS is installed on it, however, the current versions of Parallels Desktop and Parallels Workstation do not support 64-bit operating systems. We are working on adding the 64-bit OSes support in future versions of our products.

From http://kb.parallels.com/en/4780

If a student works on a document on a Linux box at school and then takes it home to work on they'll be in for a shock.

I never had this problem, whether I used Linux, OS X , or Windows in school or at home. And yes, I used all three OSes both in school and at home. Now I have another advantage, I can run all three OSes on the same computer, and using a virtual machine I can run them at the same tyme. I'm typing this on a Mac running Leopard and have been thinking about installing Ubuntu on it to make it a dualboot PC. If I do I can run Ubuntu inside Leopard by using one of a number of VMs. Many store that sell Macs also sell Parallels and VmWare. Vrtualbox is an open source VM that works on all three OSes.

Falcon

Zones. Because sometimes full-blown virtualisation is too much like hard work

On Linux you get the same functionalty from OpenVZ or its commercial cousin Virtuozzo.

Do what I did and simply dump your entire Windows partition into a Parallels VM. I recently discovered that Parallels has a VM product for Linux, and I am running it as we speak on an Ubuntu box. 8.04 is not officially supported, but it seems to run fine. For me, my day job requires a UNIX-like machine, but my night classes often require a Windows machine (specifically, Visual Studio). I find it ironic that I've been moved to Linux *by necessity*, but people keep repeating the "Linux is not ready for the desktop" mantra. I didn't even *want* to use Linux (I prefer OpenBSD), but it fits, so I use it. I suppose if you need access to the new shiny, then go ahead and run a very expensive version of Windows for your machine, but XP works just fine for my purposes. Ubuntu has plenty of shiny for my own tastes.

"Sooner or later someone will work out a way to get Windows applications running seamlessly on Intel Mac, if they haven't already."

You already can:

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/features/coherence/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN9jNNeEd98

"If it's for school only, then the 13" macbook is perfect for the backpack and can run your choice of Linux or OS X or both, plus a number of legacy applications from Windows."

Um, it can also run current Windows apps using BootCamp with no emulation, full hardware support, or you can use Parallels, or VMWare.

At that point it can run more applications (outside of hardware limits like having an integrated GPU) than any Windows machine, natively. Kinda nice...

You used to be correct, but that's thankfully changing. Parallels 3.0 now uses DirectX from WINE and a special driver for Windows to deliver 3D acceleration for Windows applications running on OS X. In my experience, I'd have to describe the result as "somewhat buggy, but overall impressive." You can see some videos if you're curious how well it actually works. VMware is rumored to be working on similar technology.

You used to be correct, but that's thankfully changing. Parallels 3.0 now uses DirectX from WINE and a special driver for Windows to deliver 3D acceleration for Windows applications running on OS X. In my experience, I'd have to describe the result as "somewhat buggy, but overall impressive." You can see some videos if you're curious how well it actually works. VMware is rumored to be working on similar technology.

I've had similar experiences with Leopard and 3rd party apps. Specifically, Parallels had substantial issues (build 5160). Their latest beta (build 5570 - http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/beta) appears to have fixed issues I've had with kernel panics, related to Parallels.

Their developers noted that Apple made substantial changes to Leopard between Release Candidate and Final. A number of other apps I had broke, though most were patched within about 1-2 weeks.

The following crash has happened three times since installing Leopard. It appears to be a Wireless driver issue, and appears to occur at random. There's an Apple thread about this (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5867190). Anyone have a clue as to what's going on? Could this be Parallels related, even though it occurs when Parallels isn't even running?

Fri Nov 23 19:14:00 2007
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x0039CD77): "m_free: freeing an already freed mbuf"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1228.0.2/bsd/kern/uipc_mbuf.c:2742
Backtrace, Format - Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x3422f978 : 0x12b0e1 (0x455670 0x3422f9ac 0x133238 0x0)
0x3422f9c8 : 0x39cd77 (0x48e03c 0x30141200 0x8594fe0 0x1)
0x3422fa08 : 0x39d073 (0x300cd000 0x8 0x3422fa58 0x1)
0x3422fa28 : 0x8f9b87 (0x301b1000 0x0 0x20 0x2)
0x3422fb98 : 0x8f9ec5 (0x23a782c8 0x23a7a150 0x3422fbc8 0x1a6d13)
0x3422fce8 : 0x90520b (0x23b71004 0x0 0x46 0xbf4b40)
0x3422fe68 : 0x8d584a (0x23a784c0 0x0 0x4203 0x49f76d0)
0x3422feb8 : 0x8d6f3f (0x95dc80 0x95dc84 0x49f76b0 0x135e09)
0x3422ff48 : 0x8d54b7 (0x42d4804 0x0 0x1361b0 0x19ccc1)
0x3422ff78 : 0x13e987 (0x42d4c94 0x42d4804 0x1a136f 0x58e46b0)
0x3422ffc8 : 0x19e2ec (0x0 0x0 0x1a10b5 0x49f76b0)
Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0
            Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
                  com.apple.driver.AirPort.Atheros(300.22)@0x8d4000->0x95efff
                        dependency: com.apple.iokit.IO80211Family(200.7)@0x8b6000
                        dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.4)@0x63c000
                        dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily(1.6.0)@0x64c000

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task

Mac OS version:
9B18

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 9.1.0: Wed Oct 31 17:46:22 PDT 2007; root:xnu-1228.0.2~1/RELEASE_I386
System model name: MacBookPro2,2 (Mac-F42187C8)

I went to install Ubuntu 7.10 on Parallels and there is a problem.

    http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=17069

I just bought Parallels yesterday and this isn't encouraging. Some forum members seem to feel that support is not forthcoming for this bug, but since this is only a few days old, I'm assuming Parallels is working on a fix.

Still, it is disappointing.

It's here here, and here.

Honestly only an idiot would buy a MacBook and run Windows instead of OS X.

Well, not exactly. Sort of. For instance, I run Windows XP sandboxed on my dual core MacBook Pro laptop, and that's the only place I run Windows at all. Windows isn't allowed to get to the net where it can get hurt, I just use it to host a few desktop applications that don't have Mac equivalents. With Parallels "coherence" mode, I'm in the OSX filesystem for the images and other files I use under Windows, but I have the Mac right there doing the right things for everything else.

I also run a linux install pretty much the same way (though no coherence, unfortunately.) The linux install is allowed on the net because it considerably more secure "out there" than Windows is. I can run all three OS's at once without any problem and get realistic performance from all of them.

Hence, no need for a Windows machine, and no need to be an "idiot", either. ;-)

As for Vista... No need to go there. We won't be writing any applications using Vista specific capabilities, either. As far as I'm concerned, Vista was dead at the starting line.

I believe Parallels does this too. It let's you run MS Word 2007 on a Mac as if it were native, for example.

Well, considering that VMWare has been rushing to put together a Mac VMWare long since Bootcamp came out...

You are clueless... http://www.parallels.com/products/coherence/

This is why I took the Mac plunge about 6 months ago. I bought an Intel Macbook, loved it so much I then bought an Intel iMac. I haven't touched Linux since. I have been using Linux heavily for about 7 years for development work and home desktops/servers.

OS X gives me the *nix goodness that I need with a great GUI and it is all wrapped up in a pretty package. :-)

Sadly, I still need WinXP for Visual Studio. However, I just bought Parallels and that problem is solved nicely. Parallels is a great product for the Mac.

I would predict that 2008 sees a larger growth percentage for Mac computers than Linux computers.

Just my $0.02

Oh shut up. Distributing a very slightly modified version of a freely-available code library is about a 0.02 on the Scale Of Injustive. Kicking someone in the ribs is about a 7.4. It would be hard to come up with a more pointlessly absurd analogy.

You know, people use this all the time, and it's simply not true. Wrong is wrong. It's not like you have a quota of immorality points you can spend how you like, and if you don't go over that limit, all is forgiven.

If you steal my french fry, you're still a bastard, and if I was hungry, I'll complain. I won't throw a screaming fit, but I'll say "Hey, don't take my fries, man." Except in this case, it's actually illegal, and it does hurt.

The whole fucking point of an analogy is to draw a parallel. The only perfect analogy isn't an analogy, it's a definition.

Look, maybe they screwed up, maybe they didn't.

I don't know how you can possibly understand enough about the statement to make a moral judgment -- and think they might not have screwed up.

If they did, well, guess what? Nobody's being hurt!

But they are being abused, and there is damage.

OK, better analogy: Let's say my bank decides to take money out of my account for some reason. I log into my electronic bank one day, and half my savings are gone. I ask them to put it back, and they say they have to check with their lawyers, because they thought they were allowed to steal from me.

You know, no one's hurt. I'm not physically in pain. Most people would still be able to shop for food, pay the bills, and so on -- it probably wouldn't be a big deal to wait another few weeks. But would you call this an acceptable situation?

In the real world, that's exactly when I'd move to another bank. Not after they've had a few more weeks to dick around and delay while they have my money and I don't, but right fucking then. The moment I login and see that, I call the bank. If it's not corrected immediately, e-check the entire account to PayPal while I continue to ask the bank for the rest of it, the next day I can take a walk around town looking for a good brick&mortar bank.

If they didn't, then this is a whole big stick about nothing (the Slashdot specialty.)

I'd think that if they didn't, either you're right, which means the summary has to be completely wrong, or there is something very wrong with the language of the LGPL, which is a big deal.

The LGPL license is confusing and vague, and it's not a done deal that they're in violation of it.

I found it to be more clear than just about any other license I've read, and an order of magnitude clearer than any EULA.

Here, read this:

You may copy and distribute the Library (or a portion or derivative of it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange.

There is no doubt that they intended to distribute Wine under the LGPL -- along with libmspack and the Plex86 VGABIOS. I do not have a copy of Parallels itself, but judging from the Wine wiki, source code did not ship with Parallels -- that, or the Wine wiki is lying. And even if the LGPL allowed such measures, I do not even see a link from the Parallels website to the Wine website, and the only mention of it anywhere but their forums seems to be on this page [parallels.com], which contains no URLs at all. It is reasonable to assume that even if they have altered nothing (which seems unlikely or impossible), that page is not really sufficient for a consumer to go download the source code -- it doesn't ev

Oh shut up. Distributing a very slightly modified version of a freely-available code library is about a 0.02 on the Scale Of Injustive. Kicking someone in the ribs is about a 7.4. It would be hard to come up with a more pointlessly absurd analogy.

You know, people use this all the time, and it's simply not true. Wrong is wrong. It's not like you have a quota of immorality points you can spend how you like, and if you don't go over that limit, all is forgiven.

If you steal my french fry, you're still a bastard, and if I was hungry, I'll complain. I won't throw a screaming fit, but I'll say "Hey, don't take my fries, man." Except in this case, it's actually illegal, and it does hurt.

The whole fucking point of an analogy is to draw a parallel. The only perfect analogy isn't an analogy, it's a definition.

Look, maybe they screwed up, maybe they didn't.

I don't know how you can possibly understand enough about the statement to make a moral judgment -- and think they might not have screwed up.

If they did, well, guess what? Nobody's being hurt!

But they are being abused, and there is damage.

OK, better analogy: Let's say my bank decides to take money out of my account for some reason. I log into my electronic bank one day, and half my savings are gone. I ask them to put it back, and they say they have to check with their lawyers, because they thought they were allowed to steal from me.

You know, no one's hurt. I'm not physically in pain. Most people would still be able to shop for food, pay the bills, and so on -- it probably wouldn't be a big deal to wait another few weeks. But would you call this an acceptable situation?

In the real world, that's exactly when I'd move to another bank. Not after they've had a few more weeks to dick around and delay while they have my money and I don't, but right fucking then. The moment I login and see that, I call the bank. If it's not corrected immediately, e-check the entire account to PayPal while I continue to ask the bank for the rest of it, the next day I can take a walk around town looking for a good brick&mortar bank.

If they didn't, then this is a whole big stick about nothing (the Slashdot specialty.)

I'd think that if they didn't, either you're right, which means the summary has to be completely wrong, or there is something very wrong with the language of the LGPL, which is a big deal.

The LGPL license is confusing and vague, and it's not a done deal that they're in violation of it.

I found it to be more clear than just about any other license I've read, and an order of magnitude clearer than any EULA.

Here, read this:

You may copy and distribute the Library (or a portion or derivative of it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange.

There is no doubt that they intended to distribute Wine under the LGPL -- along with libmspack and the Plex86 VGABIOS. I do not have a copy of Parallels itself, but judging from the Wine wiki, source code did not ship with Parallels -- that, or the Wine wiki is lying. And even if the LGPL allowed such measures, I do not even see a link from the Parallels website to the Wine website, and the only mention of it anywhere but their forums seems to be on this page, which contains no URLs at all. It is reasonable to assume that even if they have altered nothing (which seems unlikely or impossible), that page is not really sufficient for a consumer to go download the source code -- it doesn't even mention winehq.org, much l

The GNU C Library actually is distributed under LGPL (http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node /Copying.html), So your closed-source proprietary code is allowed to link with it without any problem and you don't have to redistribute the Glibc's code as long as it's unmodified. According to http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=12648& highlight=wine , a guy named Andrew, who is a Parallels' forum administrator, openly admitted they're using modified LGPL code, as quoted: "In current implementation Parallels uses modified Wine code under LGPL license.". What they're missing is the fact that according to the LGPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html), in it's Section 2, if they distribute modified binaries based on the LGPL code they need to redistribute the source code of the modified LGPL library under LGPL or GPL. Quoting:

"2. Conveying Modified Versions.
If you modify a copy of the Library, and, in your modifications, a facility refers to a function or data to be supplied by an Application that uses the facility (other than as an argument passed when the facility is invoked), then you may convey a copy of the modified version:
a) under this License, provided that you make a good faith effort to ensure that, in the event an Application does not supply the function or data, the facility still operates, and performs whatever part of its purpose remains meaningful, or
b) under the GNU GPL, with none of the additional permissions of this License applicable to that copy."

From tfa:

"Parallels Desktop for Mac(www.parallels.com) contains Wine's Direct3D code according to http://www.parallels.com/en/licensing/. So far(June 30th, 2007) attempts to ask them for the modified source code failed. This page is meant for keeping track of this, without starting legal action or a publicity campaign yet."

Great way for some lamo to start a publicity campaign when the wine guys didn't even want that yet.....

Before we all get too excited...

The TFA links to a page on the official Parallels website that acknowledges the use of open source code from various sources, including the use of the LGPL, and offers to provide the source on request, as required.

Allegedly, when people have actually EMAILed this address, the response has been less than satisfactory.

Its quite right that the WINE people are keeping an eye on this situation, but I suggest that people browse the rest of the Parallels support fora and form an impression of the company's general track-record vis. timely and helpful responses to EMAIL requests before trying to answer the "conspiracy" vs. "cock-up" question.

Parallels for Mac is a jolly impressive product - they got a perfectly usable package out of the door, at a very low price within, what? six months of the launch of Intel Macs, and have since been regularly upping the ante in terms of OSX/Windows integration. However, they also have issues - e.g. too many people were enticed by the website to try the beta version of 2.5 and the current blurb for 3.0 widely oversells its ability to Run today's most popular PC games on a Mac.

The latter is a pity - what they've achieved is jolly impressive (e.g. I've been quite happily running "Freelancer" - everything apart from the opening splash & movie works, UT2004 was tolerable, with glitches) but its much more "enjoy a few of your 3-4 year old PC games that you didn't think you'd be able to play again".

As for the EMAIL & support: they'd been selling virtualization software to a crowd of tech-savvy developers and sysadmins, then they suddenly started dealing with regular Mac users who wanted to sync their mobile phones or run accounting software and were now trying to "virtualize" the copy of windows previously installed under "bootcamp". Anybody here want to volunteer for that particular helldesk?

> Think for a moment and stop going off like an idiot.

> Who do you think should make the decision as to what is legally required? Perhaps the legal department? Perhaps they have outside counsel like many small companies, and their lawyers needs to read the LGPL and figure out what it applies do.

Wtf are you talking about ? The thing is as clear cut as it can be. In http://www.parallels.com/en/licensing/ parallels says that you have to send a request to "license@parallels.com" to get the source code. Legalities like the right to distribute software should not be handled AFTER the sale, but BEFORE.

As a paying parallels 3.0 customer, I sent an email, asking for the source code. Either they send me the source code in a reasonable delay, or I will ask for a refund (because they are sending me software they have NO RIGHT to distribute).

> Companies that sold CDs and simply put links on their website to their modified code weren't complying with the GPL.

Wtf? How can you get modded insighful ? Parallels 3.0 is only available via the net, so they only have to provide the link on the net. Here is the corresponding serction of the FAQ:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCDistri buteWithSourceOnInternet

"I want to distribute binaries via physical media without accompanying sources. Can I provide source code by FTP instead of by mail order?
        You're supposed to provide the source code by mail-order on a physical medium, if someone orders it. You are welcome to offer people a way to copy the corresponding source code by FTP, in addition to the mail-order option, but FTP access to the source is not sufficient to satisfy section 3 of the GPL.

        When a user orders the source, you have to make sure to get the source to that user. If a particular user can conveniently get the source from you by anonymous FTP, fine--that does the job. But not every user can do such a download. The rest of the users are just as entitled to get the source code from you, which means you must be prepared to send it to them by post.

        If the FTP access is convenient enough, perhaps no one will choose to mail-order a copy. If so, you will never have to ship one. But you cannot assume that.

        Of course, it's easiest to just send the source with the binary in the first place.

        If you distribute binaries via FTP, you should distribute source via FTP."

Cheers,

--fred

Also they do now offer the source code.

According to this parallels.com forums post, the version of Wine used in Parallels is, in fact, modified. So they are absolutely obligated to hand over the source code.

In fact, even if their version of Wine were not modified, they would still be required to deliver its source code on demand since they are delivering it in binary form to customers.