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CrossOver Plugin 1.0 Demo Version
jwnewman writes "CodeWeavers has released the Demo version of CrossOver plugin." I bought the regular version when it first came out, just to try it out. It's pretty impressive - I've only had some problems with it under Konqueror, but that's had more to do with my plugin setup. The demo version is a full version, but with nags in it. It's well worth checking out.
My question is whether others out there think this is a good software model? Personally I think it is. They have identified a genuine lack of service which they provide. They provide this service by building on open source technology, namely wine, and then provide a closed for profit products on top of this technology. The revenue generated by these products allow for greater development in the underlying tech (again namely wine) while still providing the desired service, the Windows plugin support.
Aside from the "well these plugins are free on windows, we shouldn't have to pay for a product that lets us use them in Linux" comments. Do people have anything else they'd like to say about the CrossOver plugins or their business model?
As I understand it, you're licensed per user, not per box. So, as long as you're the only one using the plugin, you can install it on all of your boxes...home, work, etc.
The links for HTTP and FTP download don't work for me but I found the directory anyway Clem.
I purchased Crossover several weeks ago and have been completely satisfied. Quicktime works great. Being able to watch the Fellowship of the Ring trailer on Linux is great! Shockwave works well for many sites. (In particular, Shockwave plugins for stuff like 3D has problems.) Codeweaver's tech support mailing list is great, the developers reply quickly and are very helpful.
While I would prefer that Crossover be free software, at least Codeweavers is contributing most of their improvements back to the main Wine project. Pretty much only the Crossover plugin itself is proprietary software. Buying Crossover is a great way to support the development of Wine and get Quicktime support on Linux right now.
I cannot imagine a better day to release this than today.
Capitalize on all the frustrated geeks and their inability to find a non-Linux box to view the teaser.
Lemonade always sells better when it's hot outside.
I purchased Crossover when it was released. There were a few initial setup problems but their support is very good. I checked their archives and found an answer to my problem (pugger.so was conflicting with the QuickTime plugin in Netscape). Though I didn't report any problems I received emails from their support staff just to make sure everything was fine.
Performance is, for the most part, indistinguishable from a native Windows version on my 900MhZ Athlon. I understand that there is some initial delay the first time the plugin is started on slower machines. It's been fine for me though.
Netscape *seems* to be a touch more unstable with the plugin installed. There are occasional long delays but I have not confirmed that this is not just some DNS timeout or other Netscape instability (I'm running 4.78... I have not tried installing on 6.1).
I generally don't buy software without having tested it out yet, and just playing with this software for ten minutes is more than enough time to justify the twenty bucks for the thing.
First time I've been truly impressed with some piece of software for Linux in the past nine months or so, and this is to the point where twenty bucks for the full version seems like it's UNDER priced.
Download the installer, run it, press a few buttons inside the config gui, and suddenly you can watch all the movies on quicktime.com.. with no stuttering or slowness.
Damn fine piece of work guys.
Open the QT control panel and go to Plug-in settings (or right-click on a movie).
Then click MIME Settings and unselect anything you don't want QuickTime to take over. (I think more recent QuickTime versions don't intercept PNG by default.)
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
If it counts, i'm another happy user of the CrossOver Plugin. What got me to jump on board and fork over cash for the 1.0 release? Easy. truth in advertising.
They made a point of telling the truth about their product and are making all due effort to support and enhance it. Great company who are doing a needed service for the Community. Not only that, they are a major supporter of the wine project. Got a few bucks? They deserve our support.
As for me, the software has been absolutely flawless. I did have some issues on a Mandrake box but it ended up being Crossover was fighing a battle with Plugger. One minor plugin deletion / restart later it installed like a dream.
Support the community! They deserve it!
Eventually, the mentality will have to change. If you want something that isn't *required* like pretty plugins or games - you're going to have to pay for them. The sooner the Linux user-base realizes this, the faster companies will develop/support/sell Linux software. End of Story.
I'd pay for a port of DirectX that *worked*. I wouldn't pay for the *chance* that said port will come out (i.e. Codeweaver's subscription philosophy) when there's really a lower chance that it will happen.
I think you're confusing Codeweavers with Transgaming. Codeweavers is selling a product to support Quicktime, Shockwave, and a few other plugins on Linux. It works right now. Transgaming is selling subscriptions for effort in supporting Windows games.
Yes it is legal. I read in an interview with the codeweavers folks that they changed the license to quicktime to make it ok to run it on an OS it wasn't designed for.
Keep in mind this is *NOT* a reverse engineering of Quicktime; this is a piece of software that allows you to emulate just enough of Windows to run the Windows version of the Quicktime player.
The better question is "Why doesn't Apple provide a player for Linux?"
B
List of Fixes in 1.0.1
Yes, it's legal. They went to Apple and asked because the license said that the software could only be installed on the OS that it was written for. Apple actually changed the license so that they could produce this product?
Why is Apple not just creating a Linux client is beyond me.
The latest mplayer supports WMV playback.
Hail to the king, baby!
One problem with porting QuickTime to Linux is that QuickTime needs a complete Window manager API because it has its own internal API for managing windows, menus, dialogs, etc. These routines call through to the underlying API which must have a large common subset of functionality to support the x-platform nature of QuickTime. So while QuickTime for KDE or QuickTime for Gnome are reasonable concepts, QuickTime for Linux is not. Of course, there is already QuickTime for Java which uses the Java API and runs on Linux.
The other thing is that Apple needs to do a LOT of work to bring the Cocoa API up to rough parity with the Windows, Java and Carbon versions. They won't make any commitments as to when, if ever, that work will be underway. If they took on Linux before Cocoa their developers would go postal.