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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."

1 of 409 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Who Next? by wallykeyster · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Its great that there are lawyers willing to spend time on OSS projects, but they just dumped a whole pile of hurt on Wine if Borland pursues this.

    How do you figure? TFA simply says that gcc can't implement the features because Borland has a patent. This means that people wanting to use Winelib must remove the SEH portions of their code in order for it to compile. This is a story about a shortcoming of gcc and Winelib because so many Windows C++ developers use SEH instead of sticking to standard C++. I see no threat of lawsuit from Borland or any potential for it.