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New Competition For CodeWeavers: Aclerex
Shisha writes "Linux Planet is running a story about a new Wine offspring. Basically the Canadian company Transgaming decided, that their version of Wine, WineX, is good not only for running games, but for other Windows programs too. So why not try to sell it? For marketing reasons they're selling it to corporations under the AclereX name. Their website has a datasheet with more details about what they are actually offering. Unlike CodeWeavers, they don't seem to be targeting individuals at all, they'd rather sell to corporations. So no downloads available, sorry. Still it could speed up Wine developement, which is always good. Wine Weekly News discusses some of the reactions of the original Wine authors."
Aclerex? Why have they named it as if it werea cream for clearing up acne?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Last I heard, they still hadn't kept their promise to give back to wine stuff they did...
Allowing Windows software firms to package it with their stuff and say "Runs on Linux"? Is this the point?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I thought Transgaming took Wine code before the LPGL change, and haven't gone back.
Do they still contribute to the mainline WINE effort? Has ANY of their code made it back?
or are we just plugging a closed-source commercial product here?
Doesn't encouraging WINE use prevent or at least slow the development of native versions of applications for Unix/Linux? Doesn't it keep people from quickly adopting a different and open application that runs natively? As long as people can comfortably run MS Office in Linux, doesn't that mean they won't bother learning OpenOffice.org? As long as users can run Windows games in WINE, what will encourage game vendors to create native versions of their applications? I could understand if this were a system being used to facilitate migration to open-source solutions, but it seems that quite the opposite is true.
Give me a clue if I need one.
Seems like there are already plenty of adequate ways to run Windowz apps under Linux. Just none of them are free software! Will the vanilla Wine ever catch up?
My bicyles
I wonder if it will be any better than Crossover's Office and Plugin products.
Are they allowed to do that when the majority of their code they didn't even write? They have been making it harder and harder to get WineX code too. First they removed it from debian and then Gentoo, and I haven't been able to get the source from CVS since then. I'm not sure what license wine was using when they forked but I dont think that this is allowed, is it?
Why does every new company or product have to invent a new word? "Aclerex"? What was so wrong with "Wine Ecks and Sons, Est. 1832, Purveyors of Fine Software and Noted Not-Emulators"?
Just to save everyone lots of comments... ;-)
:-)
WINE is bad because it will discourage people from writing native applications. Native applications are important because they provide a reason for people to use GNU/Linux or *BSD wholesale, rather than flit between a Free OS and Windows. They also mean more innovation and more investment in Free Software, and more Free Software available. Will The GIMP just drop off the map once Photoshop is reliably supported? Will we no longer see native ports of games, with companies instead hoping that WINE(X) will, at some point, work well with other platforms? Maybe WINE will stop many companies from looking seriously as developing applications as cross-platform from the start, which will hurt users of other platforms like MacOSX, old MacOS, maybe GNU/Hurd, BSDs, etc.
or...
WINE is good because it will fill the application gap until Free Software can catch up. Rather than wait a few years for all the weird and wonderful applications we don't have to appear, WINE will let corporate and home users make the switch straight away and slowly migrate from Windows. WINE will encourage gamers. WINE with winelib will make cross-platform development a sinch in years to come.
Now.... discuss
It can be hard to run a business when you are giving away your product for free. They would have to sell support services to say viable, and they must not feel they could remain in business long that way.
.:diatonic:.
It won't be long before Microsoft sues them over the name similarity...
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
For some reason, my brain keeps wanting to make this name into some variant of "Accel-".... as in Accelerex. At least then the name is a sort of verb... but "AclereX" sounds like some sort of weird drug. I mean, ACK-luhr-ex? With a capital X? I don't get it. Why must open-source products be plagued by such terrible marketing?
Oh, and on their front page, they've titled it "Enterprise Migrationware." Please, for the love of God, hire a marketing staff. This sounds like a bunch of geeks getting together and saying "What would PHBs like? Oh, I know, let's make a new buzzword! How about 'enterprise migrationware'? Because, see, it has 'enterprise' in it... and we've added 'ware' to the end..."
No. Please do not name your product with the dot-com bullsh*t generator; it's not supposed to be used in the place of a marketing team. Take this one back to the drawing board.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Old WINE and new bottles. Nothing to see here, move along folks.
WINE license page
CodeWeavers: nice folks with a strong customer service orientation. They produce a product that is generally quite reliable, they'll give your money back if it won't do what it's supposed to, and they have a decent support system.
Transgaming: MIA, zero customer service orientation. The product worked for one of the fifteen games I tried with it, the support forum is very difficult to use, and the emails I sent trying to find a human went unanswered.
I'm sure that some people have had opposite experiences, but after my attempts to deal with these two companies I have no interest in giving money to Transgaming. I'd buy a Crossover Games though.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
It was BSD, they change it, forked into ReWind (still BSD) and normal WINE (LGPL).
A part of the patches is dual-licensed, but not all developers are cooperating with ReWind (especially the CodeWeavers people).
Uhm.... WineX isn't a distro at all, it's the Win32 and DirectX libraries ported to run on Linux.
Luke-Jr
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Or it was when TransGaming forked. I believe after they forked, WINE changed to LGPL. Besides, even [L]GPL products do not have to be freely downloadable. TransGaming could simply include the source code when you purchase their products and it would be legal.
Luke-Jr
Or it could hopelessly fragment Wine even further. I've run the commercial version of Wine, and it behaved completely differently from the open-source version, which I found to be massively broken(impossible to get set up correctly). It --appears-- that from a useability standpoint for the end user, none of the commercial stuff has made it back to the open-source project. Why would Aclerex have any interest in fixing the open-source version of Wine to work better? Talk about conflict of interest...
Please help metamoderate.
...the latest designer drug name
Warning: Women who might be pregnant should not take Aclerex, or handle broken tablets...
Much of what Transgaming is selling is proprietary. Perhaps legitimately so (like the copy protection support...)- but it is still closed source all the same. In some areas, they're ahead of WINE, in others, they're behind.
Keep these things in mind when you think about all of this, though...
They were going to only go after the stuff that wasn't getting active ports and actually encourage native porting work. They turned around and came up with that bastardized "port" of The Sims and Kohan- which had issues out of the box in both cases. The Sims WAS going to be a native app and Kohan WAS a native app that had lost the porting company (Timegate got the rights to the Loki port, but they didn't want to wait and find out it's fate- they went with Transgaming.).
They were going to only work at making Linux gaming possible. Now, they're making game "ports" for Windows and MacOS of console games, but NO Linux versions of the same.
Would YOU trust this bunch?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Aclerex is a fork of wine if i'm not mistaken, and wine is licenced under the GPL, how can they then sell it?
Ok, I know you can sell free software, but as the article said: they'd rather sell to corporations. So no downloads available, sorry. No source available? WineX has source available which is free, and they also have a version you can buy which has some non-free win32 dll thingies.
Please correct me if i'm wrong, it feels like I am, but can they do this?
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
WineX was forked from WINE before WINE was GPLed. If I remember right, WINE was origionally under the BSD lisence.
#include "sig.h"
How did you translate 'no downloads available' into 'No source available'?
They are only required to give you the source when you buy(get) a copy from them.
ts a good plan, and I'm glad they are competition for CodeWeavers, I dont like CodeWeavers, they are a very greedy destructive company and they remind me alot of SCO in how they act sometimes.
What makes you say that?
Winem Bindem Linkem and Dumpem.
But their PR department nixed the idea.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
can they do this?
Yes. They can. The GPL requires that the source be made available either with the binaries, or as a separate download if requested by a possessor of the binaries.
So you can go buy it, and then you're entitled to the source code after you do.
On the other hand, the fork that Transgaming has was based on the BSD license, not the GPL (Wine changed licenses some time ago), so they can do whatever they want at that point, because their source code isn't bound by the GPL anyway.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
CodeWeavers was responsible for the whole Wine split which damanged Transgaming and Lindows.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Quite honestly, I've tried OpenOffice on my 800Mhz 64-MB PC, and it is so slooow, that I uninstalled it.
Koffice is faster, but crashes regularly. I understand, I'm using the older KDE (2.x), because I'm on Debian/Woody; but I had installed KDE 3.0 before, along with it's KOffice, and I was still getting crashes.
So there is no version of Office for Windows that I am aware of that works well. As long as that is the case, WINE is good for OSS, not bad. That is, if they can get Office working successfully. I tried WINE with Word98, and it sucked. But maybe WineX doesn't. If it doesn't, then I'm all in favor of WineX, closed source or not. After all, the Windows apps are also closed source; we're talking about migrating slowly, not jumping in with both feet.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
WineX gives back code, but not everything.
They gave back all DirectX things but the Direct3d stuff. Their CD-copy-protection-simulator-patch or whatever they apply to the binary version is completly transgaming and not made public in the cvs.
I was pleasantly surprised with OpenOffice.Org on my Mac G3 "Wallstreet" PowerBook running Yellow Dog Linux 3.0. I don't have tons of RAM (192MB) and the proc is only 233MHz (Basically equiv. to a 466MHz PII) but it ran acceptably.
I haven't played with KOffice but since OpenOffice works I might not even put any Redmond crap on the PowerBook. OO.O will indeed open/save any but the most complex MS Office documents. It also blithely ignores Word/Excel Macro viruses and might even cleanse them from documents that are infected.
OpenOffice works beautifully in both x86 and PPC Linux, and is known to work in *BSD. (which is NOT dead, btw) It also runs on the X11 compatibility layer in MacOS X.
OpenOffice likes a wee bit more RAM than 64MB. However, not much more is necessary. The Windows version seems to be very happy in 256MB RAM on a 466MHz Celeron. The Linux version flies on both my 733MHz PIII with 512MB and an AthlonXP 1800+PR with 512MB RAM. Starting OO.O on my Mac PB with Yellow Dog Linux requires a bit of patience, but once it's up and running it works. Again, that's just with 192MB RAM. When I finally get 384MB in there it will be very content indeed.
A little RAM will do ya. Just get another stick. It's not very expensive. And it will make a world of difference.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I have paid transgaming for about a year now. I've been testing their software and seeing how they operate. Since transgaming's stance on packaging the source code of winex has come to light, I have since neglected my subscription.
I was able to play, in 1 years time, WarCraft 3 on 1 particular version of WineX. I don't recall which one, but the successive version broke even that. I tested all the games they purported to support. I have alot of games.
Their forums are forums.. nothing spectacular. They have maybe 2 guys from Transgaming reading and helping users on the forums. They do not consistently respond to email. And if they do, again, it's from the guys in the forums... reminding me of a Chinese Firedrill.
I have since decided to let my sub lapse due to the environment described above. They act as if they own this code, and their license is NOT the LGPL like wine. It reminds me alot of an artificial patent. They hold on to your code for a couple of years, while they give nothing back and try to sell it. Standing on the shoulders of others and congratulating yourself on being the first to get there is no accomplishment in my eyes. But that's just my opinion, and you know what opinions are like. Anyway, It's like this:
"The source code to TransGaming WineX (minus copy protection related code, for now) is available through VA Linux's SourceForge website. You can examine and modify it to your heart's content, you can watch the changes we make as we go, and you can participate in detailed development discussions on our mailing list. The only thing you can't do is redistribute WineX code for any commercial purpose. The WineX code is licensed under the Aladdin Free Public License, which prohibits commercial use of our work. If you wish to use WineX commercially, please contact our sales team to arrange for alternative licensing arrangements.
Once we have reached our subscription goals, we plan to release all of the WineX source code under the Wine license, which will allow it to be directly integrated with the core Wine project code hosted at www.winehq.com. Until then, we will periodically submit selected portions of our code for integration with the Wine project."
Essentially, we ain't gonna see shit. And with their smacking Debian and Gentoo on the head for packaging the code, they aren't following their own rules. Commercial enterprises are for profit. Debian is non-profit. Gentoo, I didn't even know was a org.. but you get the point.
If they are this rambunctious now and giving nothing in return- what happens if business picks up. Just my observation. My gut instinct is to say fuckem. And my gut is usually right.
This seems like a good idea to me. There is bound to be a market for quick, specialized, porting services to Linux. A lot of companies are looking at moving to Linux on at least some of their desktops but in many cases there are one or two in-house or 3rd party niche software products that will prevent migration from happening. For in-house products, it might not make financial sense to rewrite the program. And smaller niche software houses often don't have the time or the Linux market size for their products to justify a "proper" port.
Enter a firm like Aclerex who comes along and says "we can port this for x dollars", suddenly a lot of migration plans fall into place.
Of course this all depends on the cost and effectiveness of the folks at Aclerex.
Actually, I don't... What does RedHat have to do with WINE or any of it's forks?
Luke-Jr
Care to share why? I'm just curious. Seems like the only way to get a decent stable wine is to buy something..
Sort of sad if you think about it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Going from a non-copyleft license to a copyleft license is just going between two forms of open source/free software. (Open source and free software is basically two different groups' descriptions for the same thing.)
(..and I promised myself I wouldn't nitpick any more...)
Your story that Wine changed from LGPL to GPL is bogus. Wine is under the LGPL license today (see here). And the LGPL license is all that is needed to prevent people from "taking without giving back".
Putting Wine under the GPL would make it seriously less useful because one of the main purposes of Wine is to let people move commercial Windows applications to Linux, and that may involve linking with it.
Why we can't do graphics as rasters and have to go through this song and dance I don't know; graphics has to be split into these three object types for a combination of device-independence and historical-bloody mindedness. On the other hand, this three-object system could be abstracted, but someone please show me the portable GUI library that has a "raster widget" which allows me to paint a picture by setting bits -- efficiently. In GUIdom, the graphics object (object 1) and its high-level ops (drawing lines, rectangles, and characters) is king, and the bitmap (object 2) is introduced as a way of blitting icons, logos, and photographics pictures sucked in from standard image file formats without having to know how the bits are stored. A raster (object 3) is somehow considered an advanced feature -- a developer is not supposed to worry one's pretty little head about graphics operations as low-level as rasters -- and if your application needs to work at the level of rasters (I compute and display "voice-print" speech spectrograms), you have some real issues with portable GUI frameworks.
Windows actually has a powerful facility for working with rasters (bless their dark little hearts) -- the CreateDIBSection() API call that allows you to create an object that has both bitmap (object 2) and a raster (object 3) interfaces -- you can twiddle the image bits through the raster interface and then turn around and use the bitmap interface to blast this image to the screen through a graphics object (object 1). I think the reason that Windows has CreateDIBSection() and its sister call StretchDIBits() is that game programmers (especially 2-d games, I understand 3-d games have gone to using high-level graphics primitives as an intermediary to the screen) blast bits, and those API calls were what Microsoft had to offer to woo developers of VGA games over to Windows -- they preceded the full-blown DirectX API. Object framework support for this is rare, but guess what, Delphi (3 and later) has a Scanline property (object 3 interface) to bitmap objects (object 2 interface) that abstracts the CreateDIBSection() call.
Also guess what: Kylix, the Qt-library version of Delphi has the Scanline property, but it is brain damaged. Apparently Qt allows for objects that are both bitmap (object 2) and raster (object 3) at the same time, but you cannot update just a piece of the raster without incurring the compute-time hit of reconverting the entire raster to repaint the bitmap every time you do that. So, if you want to be selectively updating a raster you have to go through the rigemarole of creating a subsized raster, doing its bitmap refresh, and then blitting to a bigger bitmap. I thought these GUI frameworks were supposed to abstract and make life simple instead of create the need to come up with all these work arounds.
What I want to know is if WINE has an effective mapping of CreateDIBSection() into whatever Unix calls, and if so, why can't Qt have the same capability so we could port to Linux and dispense with this WINE thingy?
Instead of replicating the Windows API, can I get the functionality of the W
In fact, in my opinion, CodeWeavers may even be working with Microsoft.
.Net version of Office.
CodeWeavers' most promoted product is Crossover Office, which allows MS Office to run on Linux.
Does this help Linux and hurt Microsoft? No . . . quite the opposite, in fact. Microsoft wants Linux users running MS Office, because that keeps them locked in to Microsoft file formats while Microsoft prepares the
On the Xandros home page, the main heading states:
> Xandros Desktop now runs Microsoft Office XP
On the SuSE Linux Desktop page, one of the major benefits listed is:
> Codeweaver Crossover Office for the integration of MS Office
Notice how they don't say "for running Lotus Notes," or "for running Windows applications." They only talk about MS Office.
How did CodeWeavers manage to get Office working correctly when so many others had failed? How did they work out Microsoft's secret/obfuscated calls? Did they get help?
Or if they hacked the calls, why hasn't Microsoft sued CodeWeavers under the DMCA (or the "only run with Windows" clause in the licenses)? After all, Microsoft sued another company who made it possible to run MS FoxPro on Linux.
What argument did CodeWeavers use to convince people to LGPL the Wine source? They used the envy-based "we don't want others to profit from our work" argument. Have you ever heard a real Open Source developer say that? I haven't. Open Source developers may talk about how the GPL protects the source from companies like Microsoft, but part of the reason for Open Sourcing your software is the hope that others might profit from it.
Where have I heard the envy-based "surely you don't want others profitting from your work" argument? It was a common refrain by Microsoft astroturfers, who were trying to convince us that the Open Source development model will fail.
Was there a danger in using a BSD license for Wine? Not really. Since the purpose of Wine is to allow closed source applications to run on Linux, it matters little if those applications include some extra code from Wine.
What was the main result of changing the Wine license to LGPL? It hurt Linux! Here's how...
The biggest area where Linux is lacking applications is not office software. It's games! And when the Wine license was changed to LGPL, it prevented most Windows games developers from using it! Unlike Office software, for speed and other reasons, games need to include some library code, not just link to it.
What do you think the fuss was about? Why do you think many game manufacturers are working with Transgaming, instead of using the LGPL'd version of Wine? Now you know, and I thank Transgaming for their part in protecting the BSD'd version of Wine.
So, to summarize, CodeWeaver's involvement in Wine has:
1) Made them money.
2) Helped Microsoft create an MS Office lock-in on Linux.
3) Hurt Linux by making it harder to port games.
It doesn't say anywhere in the Linuxworld article that the source will not be available, or anything at all about downloads whatsoever. I'm not sure where the submitter got this information. Could be the Aclerex site, but it's already down.
I don't have information either way, but before jumping to conclusions and starting a witch hunt, I'd wait for the real facts. It's very possible that the reason their are "no downloads" is that's it's simply not done yet! Companies ususally announce products a fair amount ahead of their actual release.
This sounds like a typical knee-jerk reaction.
Oops, I meant LinuxPlanet article. Sorry LP!
In the the very nice anime series "Serial Experiments Lain" there is a designer drug like nano-machine based "Accela" substance.
Accela causes a change of consciousness and seems to connect people to the "Wired", a huge omnipresent network, without additional tech.
Jan
Wine is good, because the biggest barrier to native application development for Linux is market penetration on the desktop. Reducing barriers businesses migrating from Windows to Linux is a good thing. Once Linux market share approaches the share for the Mac (or once an application can be written once for both Mac and Linux), then more native apps will appear for Linux.
On the other hand, this approach didn't work for OS/2.
On the gripping hand, the migration to 64-bit computing is a good opportunity to break MS stranglehold. Unless MS aligns strongly with AMD, they will shortly have their own compatibility issues with their current applications when user workstations upgrade to 64 bits. If Microsoft is confident of their market dominance, they will put almost all of their development efforts to the Intel 64-bit platform and only play lip service to AMD. If they have legitimate concerns about losing market share because users will refuse to upgrade their office applications, they will give real support to AMD.
Since AMD is such a weak competitor to Intel, it will take a VERY strong Linux to drive Microsoft into providing OS support for AMD. This means that if enough high quality Open Source 64 bit applications are available when the big migration occurs, the market will be much more open than it is now.
WINE is a great tool for educating the market and preparing businesses to accept the idea of Linux desktops.
We are the 198 proof..
Not only are they "nice guys", but CodeWeavers Wine (CrossOver Office) works right now: today!
I have been running Office 97 on my Xandros desktop with it since last November and it has worked pretty much flawlessly (primary exception being that I find directory management a slight pain when saving or opening). Now I run Office XP: PowerPoint, Excel, Word on my Xandros Desktop and they work perfect. No complaints, you should definitely try it.
While CrossOver (CodeWeavers Wine) does not work for every app in the Windows universe, it does work for a couple of the most important and really kicks some butt while it is at it. By supporting these apps, it allows people to adopt Xandros where they otherwise would be stuck with Gates.
Aclerex poses little threat. Their technology does not work today and may never. Meanwhile CodeWeavers is chugging right along building up their user base.
My main concern is that their very open license will make it difficult for Code Weavers to make money long term. As anyone can grab the tree at any time and have their own version there is a low ceiling for what Code Weavers can charge. This in turn makes it harder for them to raise money, make money from selling their software, and, hence, invest in making CrossOver better, faster.
Hunger is the best sauce.
Just to play devil's advocate, nowhere in the LinuxPlanet article or on the AclereX site (that I could find) does it say that there will be no downloads. As far as I could tell, this is complete conjecture on the part of the submitter.
:)
The most likley explanation is that the software isn't even ready for release yet. The site is only barebones at this point, anyway.
Give Transgaming's past history, the submitter is probably correct, but there's not enough information at this point to make such an accusation. The submission itself is flamebait!
Um, I didn't really write anything about the reactions of Wine developers in this weeks' WWN. Save for agreeing with Mike Hearn that an announcement still seems pending.
Oh well, thanks for the press. It's always nice to see.
----- obSig
"Still it could speed up Wine developement, which is always good."
Really? Did I miss something? Has Transgaming ever released their source to the open source community?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
For being such an ' industry leader ', how come their Interest form doesn't work? If I fill it out, it gives a Mason error complaining it can't load countries.