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Catching up with Wine
An anonymous reader writes "TransGaming's announcement of the availability of WineX 3.0 got a lot of pixel dust, but that wasn't the only recent news about WINE. The Microsoft monopoly also reached out to touch the project when Whil Hentzen, a leading proponent of Visual FoxPro (VFP) development on Linux, was contacted by an Microsoft manager and told it was a violation of the VFP EULA to run it on Linux." I guess thats one way to stop emulation. update Oh well, its a dupe. Whatever, it gives people something to complain about I guess ;)
But but but..
Wine
Is
Not an
Emulator
????
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
There is in the life EULA a section about not beeing a prick against your fellow humans. I think working at MS violates it.
Christ.... It is a sick sick world when you 1. pay many dollars for your software 2. after paying many dollars, not allowed to use it in new innovative ways.
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
Make the software capable of emulating VFP, but leave it up to the user to violate the EULA. Doesn't the user "agree" to the EULA anyway? The people involved in making the emulator have nothing to do with the end user breaking the EULA.
Is it me, or have more dupes been posted in the past 3 months than in the past 4 years? I'm not trolling, I'm just generally curious if the editors actually read their publication (if it can be considered a "publication" or site or whatever).
/. But now, another dupe, and CmdrTaco is so oblivious to this it's really just sad.
This story was big news, at least, I thought so. I thought it was insightful and telling (especially of MS monopolistic practices), and that it got a lot of (deserved) attention, even more so that it's been on
It's okay if you don't agree. I can take the -1 Offtopic and -1 Troll if you wish. I can hear the karma sizzling...
No, they say you can't use it anyway you want. Whether or not that is legally enforceable is another question.
> It's the reason why I just use VNC to get to my Windows machine
;-)
Isn't that also something microsoft has been moaning about, in that when vnc'ing to a windows os tht you need 2 windows licences, 1 for the "windows" machine and 1 for the machine that vnc is running on (ie for you linux box!) Dunno what happened there, i'm sure it was introduced (licence change) in xp and a win 2000 service pack.
Ho hum, licenses suck! In fact pretty much everything that tells you you can't do sucks, but that doesn;t mean letting you do what you want would work either, unfortunatly people want to make money, and restricting others is a good way to do that,
hmmmm:
Patent application:
For a method of creating revenue by restricting the rights of others.
MONEY!!!!
+----------------- | What is the question!
IANAL, but I do keep up with court cases; AFAIK there are very few valid EULAs (which appear solely online, BTW). Since the license is not presented to me until after the exchange of money for product, the doctrine of "First Sale" trumps many of the onerous "can't do that" clauses in EULAs. (See Softman v. Adobe.) When the fair use copying (to include space-shifting) is included, one can argue that an EULA is not required for use of software, despite the fact that copying or stated agreement-implying actions may take place. Since I bought the product to use it, my use of the product is not consent to an agreement (likewise, my exercise of fair use space shifting does not imply consent); therefore, since I have neither clearly stated an agreement to the license nor do I believe the EULA listed by boxed software (neither print nor digital) is valid, I do not feel bound by their conditions. (My actions are instead regulated by traditional copyright law, which still forbids redistrobution, modification, and multiple simultanious users.)
Even were the above false, VFP is produced by Microsoft. I would argue that this clause represents illegal (monopolistic) tying of the application product to Microsoft's operating systems.
Do you like Japanese imports?
You will have a hard time convincing anyone that they should not be able to use the software they purchased under another OS. Monkeyshines like this from Microsoft are just another good reason to not make the purchase in the first place. I got my junky old win98 sitting in the corner and it is rarely used.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It works under a different premise of law and performs a totally different purpose. It's been explained dozens of times and if you aren't clear on it now then you're either willfully ignorant or shouldn't be talking about things you haven't read.
MS does not support products under WINE. They never have. They likely never will. That's a given, and there's a huge difference between "not supporting a product" and "suing people who do unsupported things with your product". There seem to be alot of people here who can't understand that, either. If you aren't comfortable running important things under WINE, that's fine. Nobody will make you, especially not Microsoft. Although they've claimed that there aren't any undocumented APIs in Windows that're used for applications.
Here's another suprise - it IS perfectly okay to reverse engineer Windows. This is why MS hasn't sued Codeweavers or the WINE project. There's specific things you have to do to make sure you don't cross any legal lines, but as long as you do that you're fine. MS doesn't have to admit it - they don't have any say in the matter. WINE is a reverse engineering of the Win32 API from publically available documentation. Nothing wrong with that.
Next question: What makes you think that EULA's are "perfectly valid"? Just because they say they are?
Microsoft has every right to declare violations in EULA's. If they don't comply at some point with state law, than of course they are invalid and you can more than likely ignore that portion of the EULA.
I hate to say it but people that complain about an EULA, should also complain about GPL, and other source code licenses. It's frustrating to hear hypocrisy and judgement based on the fact that Microsoft is for-profit and not hear the same for similar agreements in the open source world.
OK, I'll bite. The difference can be expressed int 3 little words - "Quid pro quo" as in when I buy FoxPRO from Microsoft I'd better get Quo for my Quid -- and a click-through license that I MUST AGREE TO and CANNOT GET MY MONEY BACK -- cannot in most states take away my Quo. In other words, the deal can not be changed AFTER you get my money, I can expect fair value, *NOT* Whatever the fuck you say I get. Open Source and Free Software licenses are *NOT* the same -- YOU DON'T HAVE TO FUCKING PAY FOR THEM -- YOU GAVE UP NOTHING (the Quid) AND YOU GOT SOMETHING (the Quo) THERE IS NO QUID PRO QUO. I hate to shout, But I get the feeling I'm talking to a Microsoft Astroturfer, because this argument is BLATANT JUSTIFICATION, of the Monopolist point of view, that anything may be put into a EULA at any time, and if you don't like it, tough. And then try to accuse OS/FS of the same thing. Yep, I talking to the MS legal department
Have a Bad Day,
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
First off, WINE is not illegal. It simply accepts the documented Win32 API calls, and responds appropriately. Nothing illegal about that at all.
Second, one of the fundamental aspects of EULA law is that if it is binding at all, it is only binding on the parties involved: the seller (Microsoft) and the buyer (the developer). If the developer creates an executable application for a client, and the client installs it to run under WINE, there is no violation of the EULA. Microsoft cannot go after the developer's client, because they were not a party to the original EULA.
Third, with the legal finding that Microsoft is indeed a monopoly on the OS, tying an application like Visual FoxPro to the OS is one of the actions prohibited by law. So even if EULAs themselves are binding, this one isn't, since you cannot enforce an illegal provision of a contract.
What's interesting is how so many people spend so much time and effort bitching about duplicates when it's so much easier to just ignore it. Anyone have any theories on why people act this way?
The only theory I can come up with is that it gives some people a feeling of superiority when they point out errors of people who they consider to be 'above them' (Slashdot editors), and in an effort to try to cover up their true intentions (which is to inflate their ego), they make claims that it is just *sooo* annoying.
Post your theories here!
Why do I keep typing pythong?
vmware isn't emulation, it's hardware abstraction