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Winelib Hobbled by Exception-Handling Patent

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the cheese-with-your-wine dept.

davidwr writes "UKBuilder.com reports that Borland's structured exception handling (SEH) patent affects Winelib. Winelib allows you to compile Windows-targeted code to run natively on Linux. Because of the patent, gcc does not include support for SEH, which is widely used in the MS-Windows world. There are workarounds, but you won't like them."

14 of 409 comments (clear)

  1. Borland's still around? by CyberSnyder · · Score: 4, Funny

    Guess I've been doing too much Unix...

  2. Ugly workaround? by evil-osm · · Score: 5, Funny

    There are workarounds, but you won't like them.

    Use Windows? (ducks)

    --


    E.

    Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
    1. Re:Ugly workaround? by Dan512 · · Score: 5, Funny

      While listening to the wineconf presentations I heard one guy talking about a scheme using goto statements.

    2. Re:Ugly workaround? by happyfrogcow · · Score: 2, Funny

      While listening to the wineconf presentations I heard one guy talking about a scheme using goto statements.

      Scheme with goto statements! That would be brilliantly evil!

  3. Thanks! by jwthompson2 · · Score: 2, Funny

    There are workarounds, but you won't like them.
    Thanks Marvin!

    --
    Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
  4. Solution: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    IIRC there is a version of DeCSS that works similarly:

    1. Take function.c, where function.c is the patented software.

    2. Add a /* */ style comment at the end of the file.

    3. gzip the file

    4. Write a program that evalautes the entire contents of the file as a single number, and check if that number is prime.

    5. If it's not, increment the crap inside the comment, repeat steps 3 and 4 and check again for prime. Eventually, you will find a prime.

    Now, you have a prime number, that if you run gzip on it, will product a file, function.c ,that can then be compiled.

    Since you can't copyright a number this works for DeCSS vs the DMCA.

    Patent law and copyright law are different so this may not apply, but still, wouldn't Fedora be allowed to distribute a prime number in their distribution? How could that be illegal? Then, it's up to the end user to actually unzip it and use it. It's the end user then that is violating the patent. Catch that!

    1. Re:Solution: by Gogogoch · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hey - why not do this with the MS Windows XP distribution ISO file?

      Lets see. XP is probably about 650Mb, so that's 5.6x10^12 bits. Let's round down for GZIP and call it 10^12 bits.

      So we just need a prime in the order of 2^(10^12). That can't be hard to do, can it? Just because the highest prime so far is in the order of 2^(10^7) just means that those mathematicians have been slacking it a bit! Lazy bums! And no doubt their software is lousy and totally inefficient. I'm sure Slashdotters could fix that.

      But why bother with those pesky prime numbers anyway? Why not just gzip it, stick it on a CD and explain that it does not contain a gzip file of someone else's IP, but is in fact a particularly interesting finite number of about 300 million hexadecimal digits. That it just happens to evaluate, via the mathematical GZIP operator, into another large hexadecimal number resembling someone else's IP is pure coincidence! I'd go for that. Seems reasonable to me.

      But why bother with GZIP? Just copy the original - we know it will fit on a CD - and the argument still holds! Brilliant! Ebay here I come!

      Does anyone have a list of email addresses I could use to see if anyone is interested in buying a very special, large, very large, hexadecimal number with unusually useful evaluation properties? :-)

  5. You won't like them. by Tenebrious1 · · Score: 2, Funny

    There are workarounds, but you won't like them.

    Wow, sounds like he's depressed, like he has a pain in all the diodes down his left side or something.

    --
    -- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
  6. Re:wine by DrJonesAC2 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Because Even Emulators Rock

  7. Let's Quit Whining and Fix this by TFGeditor · · Score: 2, Funny

    I know most of us here assembled are sick of all this software licensing crap. Slashdotter jokes notwithstanding, we are some of the most intelligent people on the planet. What say we combine that intellect and come up with a way to combat all this software patent madness?

    First suggestion: Elect a steering committee to form an organization/lobbying group.

    What do you think?

    --
    Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
  8. Huh? by Grendel+Drago · · Score: 4, Funny

    Man, I wish I knew what that meant. It sounds pretty frickin' sweet.

    --grendel drago

    --
    Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
  9. In Marvin's Voice by IdahoEv · · Score: 1, Funny

    There are workarounds, but you won't like them.

    I swear I heard Alan Rickman's voice reading this line to me.

    --
    I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
  10. Enough alrady. by nrlightfoot · · Score: 2, Funny

    Let's just start our own country and be done with all these stupid laws.

    --
    what sig?
  11. Re:Enough already. by plaxion · · Score: 2, Funny

    Great idea, but er... what would be our new country's native language? C? Perl?

    *ducks*