CodeWeavers Release Server Version Of CrossOver

Jeremy White writes: CodeWeavers has just launched the Server Edition of CrossOver Office. Server Edition provides Windows applications like Microsoft Office to thin clients and previously unreachable platforms like Solaris/SPARC. It's designed to compete directly with Citrix and Windows Terminal Server solutions, primarily on price (watch that TCO drop, baby). The most delicious irony will come when we release a Windows client, and we start serving Windows applications to a Windows desktop through a Linux server.""

Comments

What are the Microsoft licensing requirements?

[burgburgburg]

First off, do they allow this sort of distribution? If so, what sort of a license does one buy?

Of course, the cynic in me would enquire as to how long people think it will be before they explicitly forbid this sort of thing.

Re:What are the Microsoft licensing requirements?

[Idaho]

First off, do they allow this sort of distribution? If so, what sort of a license does one buy?

Of course, the cynic in me would enquire as to how long people think it will be before they explicitly forbid this sort of thing.

look here to get at least some answers to questions like this.

Let me quote some of it:

Q: Can Microsoft prevent CodeWeaver's customers from running Microsoft applications on Linux?

A: No. Microsoft's end-user licenses do not preclude operating their applications under other operating systems. Were Microsoft to attempt to prohibit such usage, by requiring that Microsoft products be run only on the Windows OS, they would be in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The Sherman Act precludes making the usage of a non-monopoly product dependent on the purchase of a monopoly product. Microsoft has been convicted of monopolist practices under the Sherman Act regarding their operating systems. As a result, they cannot legally make Microsoft Office dependent on having a Windows OS license.

Q: Can Microsoft sue CodeWeaver's customers for using Wine?

A: Not if you license Wine from CodeWeavers. One of the protections you receive as a customer of CodeWeavers is that you are licensing Wine from us. We warrant that the product you are buying from us is legal. If it isn't, the term of your license agreement with us says that we are responsible for its legality, not you.

So, they have found a very nice way to circumvent this problem - if Microsoft might find a way to make this illegal afterall (companies could be scared this might happen), they specifically tell you in their agreement that THEY will take the blame, not you.

Ofcourse, this means Crossover would go out of business, but that would happen anyway if MS finds a way to outlaw their software. At least it takes away the reason 'I can't buy this because I fear it might give me legal trouble'.

Confused

[jvmatthe]

So we've got non-free software built on top of free software in order to serve up non-free software from a company that wishes to destroy free software.

I'm so confused. Can't they all just wear black hats or white hats so I know which ones are the bad guys and which are the good guys?

Crossover Office Rocks!

[u-235-sentinel]

I've been using crossover office for a month and already love it!

Basically I was not allowed to pop/imap into the exchange 5.5 server and have been running vmware with win2k/office. vmware is great however running win2k under linux was terribly slow. Now I simply run outlook under linux/crossover and life is good. Outlook under Linux is VERY fast!

I strongly recommend their products. I'll be keeping an eye on them in the future.

Re:Crossover Office Rocks!

[Wizard of OS]

If they install Outlook Web Access, you could also use Outlook Grabber. Yes, I wrote it, yes, I am plugging it real hard now, but at least it's Free(tm). ;-)
</plug> When I have time, I'll try porting it to Exchange 2000 web access, that's a bit different in layout unfortunately :(

Re:CodeWeavers, yeah!

[IamTheRealMike]

According to this and discussion seen lately on the mailing lists, it seems QuickBooks support is fairly close now. Let's hope so shall we?

Informative? Should be (-1, delusional)

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Office licenses are per-machine, rather than per-user (as far as I know), 1 license of Office can be used to serve hundreds of clients with a fast enough machine. It's a pretty big loophole in their licensing, but due to the lack of multi-desktop remoting in Windows I guess they never thought any body would figure out how to exploit it.

Try doing some basic research:

If you don't want to click the link, here you go:

Note: Every device that connects to a terminal server will need to be properly licensed for its own terminal server usage, in addition to being licensed appropriately to use other applications and servers. Use terminal servers to centrally manage and support the deployment of Office suites in your organization. Dedicate a license for Office for every computer on which you plan to use Office. Examples of computers that might run Office on a terminal server include Windows-based workstations, Macintoshes, and UNIX workstations. The terminal servers themselves do not require Office licenses, unless someone sitting at the console will be running Office.

Misspelling in the writeup...

[Anonymous Coward]

The most delicious irony will come when we release a Windows client, and we start serving Windows applications to a Windows desktop through a Linux server.

Right there... irony. The correct spelling is soul-crushing lawsuit.

Licensing, not enough.

[FreeLinux]

The press release does not go into detail about the terminal server features of the new Cross-Over Server. Does it use it's own transport mechanism, or is it relying on X-11?

I suspect that it is using the X-11 approach and this will NOT impact the likes of Citrix. Citrix provides a great deal of functionality beyond simple terminal services. The management tools and the ability to publish applications are unrivaled and any administrator who has used them is not going to easily part with them. But, perhaps the biggest distinction is that Citrix uses a TINY amount of bandwidth when compared to X-11 or VNC. Whereas Citrix ICA protocol can work very nicely at 20Kbps VNC can easily use a couple of hundred Kbps and X-11 can go over 10Mbps for even basic applications.

Sure a Citrix implementation costs a fortune, mostly due to the fact that Microsoft requires three different licenses including a Windows license, a Terminal Server license and then Terminal Server CALs. It's damn expensive but, companies that really need that kind of functionality can easily afford it and once it's in, they won't part with it.

Re:so how is this different from remote X + wine?

[IamTheRealMike]

Yeah, that's basically how it works. CodeWeavers build on top of it to provide easy management etc, and also it's normally easier to get applications working on their stuff as they have app specific hacks, friendlier setup tools and so on.

If you wanted, you could set this up using only WineHQ builds and some shell scripts - as is often the way, it comes down to time vs money.

DMCA?

[sterno]

Here's an unplesant thought of how they could make it illegal. In the next release of Office, make it dependent on some sort of DRM technology in the Windows operating system. If they did this:

1) Because that is security related, Microsoft could keep the knowledge of how this interface would work under the exceptions outlined in their settlement.

2) If Codeweavers was to reverse engineer it, Microsoft could claim that their implementation was circumventing an access control and take them to court under the DMCA. Moreover, since Codeweavers actually sells these products, they could actually be brought up on criminal charges.

Number two might make for an interesting court battle, assuming codeweavers has the resources to fight it.

Re:You still need an office license for every clie

[Soko]

Very true - if you need to buy any more licenses, that is. This software will allow you to do two things:

1 - use the Office licenses you already have in perpetuity. No Licensing 6.0 style "software as a service" pay-me-now-and-pay-me-later is needed - it is, after all, Linux.

2 - pool the Office licenses you have, making better use of a valuable resource. Say you have 100 employees and 70 Office licenses. You can pool those 70 licenses on Crossover Office Server, and likely keep every one of your users happy. Not everyone has Word/Excel/Access open all of the time, so it makes very good sense to pool them in this way.

Soko

Re:Informative? Should be (-1, delusional)

[Strog]

Licensing Microsoft Office in a Windows Terminal Server Environment

Mostly talking about Microsoft's terminal licensing here. Read the EULA for Office and you will see a license only allows you to use it one at a time so you still will need to buy a bunch of licenses.

We used to run network installs of Word, Excel, etc. on 3.11 diskless workstations. The license was set up for concurrent use if you installed it this way. We had x number of licenses and some 3rd party software that would popup a box when x+1 copy tried to run. It would ask if you wanted to wait or send a message to one of the users currently in it and listed the current users.

I believe there has been some rewording since the 16bit days. Anyone have current EULA info?

Diff's btw this and Wine; and Solaris platforms

[brycenut]

OK, the difference between using Wine & Codeweavers product is that you're getting a customized version of Wine that specifically WILL run MS Office products. I've played with regular wine, through many incarnations and versions, and never had any real success getting MS Office apps to run. OTOH, I have had great success with Codeweavers workstation product.

This product is used to serve up (via X) MS Office apps to multiple clients, as has been possible for years using a Windows Server and running MS Office over the network, a standard procedure in many companies. This makes it easy to upgrade, apply service packs, etc, as all you have to do is update 1 copy on the server, rather than all users copies on their workstations.

This product executes the Office app under wine on x86 Linux, and sends it to any given X server. Presumably, you could run a Win32 PC X server and run MS Office from an x86 Linux server to a Windows desktop, although, this would obviously be somewhat counterproductive.

Since wine only runs on Linux (and FreeBSD, to some extent) on x86 processors, as mentioned in FAQ #3 on the wine development site, this means that users of Solaris, LinuxPPC, sparc Linux, and other commercial UNIX users were left out in the cold as far as being able to run MS Office. Now, however, you simply need to set up a server with this product, install MS Office, and then setup accounts, etc. Users can simply run the program, and Word, et. al. will appear as a regular window on their X desktop.

PS. The level of what works/what doesn't varies a little among the Office family; Word & Excel are best, PPT/Access don't run as well, the last I checked. IE & Outlook are supposed to be great. (at least as great as said products can be :))

Re:Irony?

[Reziac]

As of the last several M$ seminars I attended, they told us that Office was indeed now licensed per warm body, and sometimes PLUS a lic. per networked machine. (At least, as best the M$ rep could explain it. It's so damn convoluted that he confused himself while making the attempt. Boiled down to trying to collect *both* per seat and per user license money.)

The examples were: If you have one machine used by one secretary, that's one license, but if the machine is accessable AT ALL by anyone else (even if they don't actually use it), you need a lic. for each and every such person. If you have one home machine with two users, you're required to have two licenses. (Yeah, like that's going to happen.)

Needless to say this got much growling from the audience.