SpecOpS Labs Response to Wine Project

Kelly McNeill writes "osViews/osOpinion received the following letter from SpecOpS Labs. This letter is in response to the WINE HQ Weekly Newsletter, Issue 222 dated May 14, 2004, entitled "PROJECT DAVID USES CODEWEAVERS CROSSOVER OFFICE". Their objective in writing this letter is to clear up some of the issues raised on the statements contained in the aforementioned Newsletter, which they believe might misrepresent their efforts to expand the availability of Windows applications on Linux."

Comments

Interesting Software Development Strategy

[capt.Hij]

Once we finalize our design and we determine exactly which open source code we will use, we will then disclose the nature and extent of the Open Source and free code that is used.

Shouldn't they be keeping track of this sort of thing as they go. This isn't going to help fight the view that open software is like the wild west with little regard to "intellectual" property. (Is that property owned by self absorbed smart people?)

Kudos to them

[Richard_at_work]

Well, its not often that you see this kind of comeback, and I take my hat off to SpecOpS for doing it.

We are puzzled over the furor of some people concerning our use of open source code such as WINE in our David software. The success of the open source movement is based upon the ability of the open source code (such as the Linux code) to be used and modified. We have improved and we will continue to improve code from selected open source projects. Once we make David available for commercial release, we will acknowledge the specific work of other individuals, groups or companies referenced in Project David, we will also release the open source code that we improved back to the community.

I must say that this is pretty much the same view I had when I read the story here on slashdot. A lot of people were lamenting the fact that they seemed to be using WINE derived code, which struck me as strange, since wasnt this the whole point of the GPL? In my view, they have embraced OpenSource pretty much fully, tho only time will tell if they succeed.

The quote they have from Trilogy makes for interesting reading, as they also publish within that quote negative aspects of the review (namely the "we have concerns about the business aspects" quote), which is almost unheard of for a company, which makes me think that they are trying to be legit. They state that the screen shots that made the rounds was basically a pre alpha, WINE repackaged with a bit of their own code, so no wonder people could spot various things wrong with it.

Here on slashdot, we seem to have a strange "community thought" on the usage of GPL code in a commercial project, and this came out in full when this story broke. Many comments were along the lines of "Oh My God, they are using WINE code! This is a rip off, they shouldnt be doing that! Someone get the FSF on this right away" (ok, paraphrased a bit). We knew pretty much nothing about the project, except what they had released as "future goals", and therefor I think the reaction was almost fully unwarranted.

They state that they are using OSS code, and they also state that they will be contributing code back to the community, what more do you want? Until this guys actually start distributing stuff, give them a break, they may very well help WINE along nicely.

Re:Kudos to them

[Joel Carr]

The current version of Wine is released under the LGPL license, not the GPL as most posts so far have been asserting. As a result it is perfectly legal to write code that links to Wine and keep the code proprietary. Any changes to the LGPLd code itself would require the changes to be made available though.

Even if the license were the GPL, there would be nothing stopping them writting seperate proprietary programs/modules to complement any GPLd code, as long as the code doesn't link to or contain anything GPL. For example, in Wine entire DLLs could be written and kept proprietary, without breaking the GPL (if this were the license being used).

To sum up, a project does not have to contain only open source or proprietary code.

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two years!

[quixoticsycophant]

1. We have been working on David for more than two years now.

C'mon, installing Crossover Office isn't THAT hard.

Which version of wine?

[trinity93]

If they used code from the MIT-X Licened codebase they could do with it what ever they wanted too as long as they gave credit. This means ship binaries only. Wine has only recently become GPL/LGPL (I forget which, i think it is LGPL) So in the end this discusion could be for nothing.

.

Nothing new...

[mike_mccormack_au]

3. Lastly, Project David is not a repackaging of Codeweavers CrossOver Office. We are experimenting with some of the open source WINE code but we are not knowingly using any of the Codeweavers source code. Perhaps, Codeweavers has unwittingly released its code back to the WINE Project.

Firstly, the bug I pointed out their screenshots is a bug that I personally created to solve another more annoying bug. The bug only exists in CrossOver's implementation of Wine, and will not be merged back into WineHQ because Alexandre(Wine's maintainer) does not like the patch.

Secondly, we don't unwittingly release any of our code... we deliberately release it all back to WineHQ, as it is written.

SpecOS labs have done nothing illegal, however the screen shots they posted show that using Wine and some patches merged from Crossover Office's Wine package, they can do what CrossOver Office has been able to do for over two years now - install Microsoft Office. What's new?