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OSNews Interviews WINE's Alexandre Julliard
Eugenia writes "OSNews talks with Alexandre Julliard, the WINE project leader and also CodeWeaver's coder, regarding the future of WINE, the obstacles of the development, the WINE commercialization and lots more. An interesting read overall."
A program that almost runs is like a plane that almost flies
Regardless of what Juliard says, WINE is mostly used as an app-level emulator. The problem is that WINE can't properly run most of the popular Windows applications, and, at the same time, alternatives like Win4Lin do a much better job at that.
The Raven
Bill Gates and Microsoft don't give one whit about WINE and it's future.
WINE will forever lag behind windows. It's not what people will run the latest and greatest [insert app/game here] under.
The tiny little fraction of zoids who use wine, don't change the MS business one bit.
I know for a fact that Bill Gates and Steve Ballamer Know about WINE, and Are actually happy that it's there. It's a Ace card with the DOJ. -- "SEE... Anyone can make a windows clone" It represents no loss in market share, but provides a clear example of the ability to replicate Windows.
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
However, for the average Linux user, WINE shouldn't matter much. After all, what's the reason he uses Linux? Certainly not running Win32 apps, but trying to find free, open alternatives. We should not try to run MS Office but rather improve Open Office & Co. (and agree on a common document standard, damnit). Instead of investing time and money in getting PhotoShop to run on Linux, how about investing time or money in GIMP instead? Etc. etc.
Add to this the fact that WINE has taken on a pretty large challenge. Given the speed with which Microsoft can (and possibly will) change their APIs in the future (and possibly make their own apps incompatible with WINE if it becomes a threat), I don't know if running common applications is really feasible. Again, hardware emulation looks like the more viable approach to me.
Let's also not forget that, were it not for Microsoft's OEM contracts, most PCs would probably come with a running, easy-to-use, well-configured Linux configuration by now, so new users could try both systems separately without ever having to touch Win32.
I personally think that cross platform capabilities are truly one of the cornerstone capabilities of OSS. To me, the developments in WINE and Cygwin are some of the most important in the entire community these days. I know that's a pretty bold statement, but I say that because both of them are major enabler technologies, both making OSS viable to a whole new crop of users. I know that there are a lot of people that have the "Screw Windoze!" mentality, but users and community are the lifeblood of OSS, which is why I feel that these projects are so important. And they've made a lot of progress lately; I don't follow WINE really closely, but did you know that Cygwin can run XFree86, and that a port of KDE 2 is underway? I'm just waiting for the day when WINE and Cygwin can run each other... :) I must admit that I am really keen on Cygwin because it has such a low barrier for entry; it makes it so much easier to introduce my friends to open source and the *nix way. As WINE matures, getting them to upgrade to Linux will be cake: "Run the programs you're used to on a stable OS without M$ license restrictions!"
That's not true. I think Win98-compatibility (and maybe WinNT4 for some business apps) would be enough.
Just tell me one Windows app that does not run on Win98 and/or WinNT4, systems that are more than 3 years old!
For most apps, even Win95 compatibility (6 years!) would be good enough.
And since (according to Microsoft themselves) more than 75% of Windows users still run Win9x, it's gonna stay that way for a loooong time.
My best wishes and my deepest regards to the Wine project,
Roland