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Corel Dropping WINE?
Nathan Ehresman writes "According to this "Corel Corporation will use GraphOn's Bridges(TM) software to allow access to Windows applications from Corel's(R) Linux desktops." Does this mean Corel is dropping support of WINE? " I sure hope not. They've put a lot of effort in to the project, and I think they raised a lot of peoples hopes and expectations...
They're just hedging their bets. (I hope.) WINE is still far from usable by non-techs, and Corel presumably need to be able to include something. My guess is that what they're -really- doing is saying (to themselves) "Ok, if WINE passes muster, we'll use that. If not, we've now got this alternative that we can throw in instead, with no loss of face." Personally, if that -is- the case, I'd say it's very pragmatic, and probably sensible, but in the long term, they're better off concentrating on WINE, if for no other reason than they have a measure of influence over WINE, and so can be sure that what they want gets implemented. They can't, for 3rd-party, closed-source software.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
One can't quite help but suspect these guys might be trying to ride some of the current publicity around Linux, especially that generated by Comdex.
I'd personally wait until Corel makes some sort of announcement themselves before taking this one from GraphOn with anything but a large grain of salt.
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what the article describes about bridges, it's basically allowing Windows apps to display their stuff on a Linux desktop via some kind of connection (modem, network, etc.). Doesn't this mean that the Windows app will still need to run on a Windows box somewhere? I don't know if that many users can afford to have two boxes just for the sake of running Windows apps on Corel Linux.
OTOH WINE lets you run Windows apps from the same box... a much more preferable solution for the typical PC user, I'd think.
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
If Corel drops support, it's not the end of the world: It's just the sign of a struggling business making a tough business decision. The work they've put into the project should be remembered & respected - but it will go on with or without them.
-Stu
Corel is using Wine to port their applications to Linux. I've always assumed (perhaps wrongly) that they weren't interested in Windows emulation, just porting their own apps using the Wine API.
GraphOn produces networking products, not Windows emulation. This is basically a Windows version of X-Windows.
So:
To port Corel Office to Linux -> Wine
To run Windows apps remotely with the display on a Linux box -> GraphOn
To run Windows apps locally on a Linux box -> Wine
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Corel wants Wine mainly for winelib, which allows it to build Linux native executable versions from its existing Windows codebase with a minimum of fuss.
GraphOn's Bridges allows you to run Windows applications on a remote server, and have them displayed locally (much like X clients). Unless Corel has suddenly dropped the licensed-software model in favour of "application rentals" from the desktop, which would be a pretty rash move even by Corel's standards, I really don't see the "threat" here.
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty
I'm alittle suprised - this really isn't "news" - it's just idle speculation. It shouldn't have been posted to /. unless one of the WINE developers came here and said Corel was backing off, not being as active on the lists, etc. All that posting this is gonna do is put corel in an (undeserved) bad light. Come on guys - let's do alittle backgrounding first before we post stuff like this. Maybe slashdot needs an opinion / rumor section, 'cuz alot of people are going to hype up the significance of this.
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The article does not indicate anything about WINE being downright eliminated, only that the GraphOn software will get added in.
It is not self-evident that WINE becomes of no value; a major value to WINE to Corel should in permitting Win32 software to be recompiled using libwine so that they may be deployed as native Linux applications.
In contrast, the GraphOn Linux Client to Bridges software is not a tool to allow Windows software to run on Linux; it is merely a tool to allow Windows software to run on Windows NT, and then display on Linux.
Essentially, this provides the same sort of functionality as the Citrix ICA protocol, or Microsoft's Hydra.
What is particularly distressing is that this supports the GraphOn Patent for Remoting Windows Applications. But that does not appear to have anything to do with WINE...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Taking a look at GraphOn's Homepage you'll notice that they sell a kind of X object handler that can act as an in between from windows to ANY desktop (including Linux). It would seem to me, then, that this move is aimed towards competing with Sun's Star Portal and the likes (Microsoft's Web Office) etc... than it is at trying to get native code ported over.
This looks like a short term goal, Graphon is all about thin computing and NC's. Anyone think the Network Computer is alive?
Joseph Elwell.
It would seem that Graph On doesn't even have a product out that allows Unixes to use Windows applications remotely. Looking through their product line you'll notice that all of their products communicate Linux/Unix applications to Windows Desktops or to Java clients. Anyone heard of an X server for windows? that's news to me.
Joseph Elwell.
Corel initially supported WINE in a big way, Corel contributed back changes, Coral actively participated in development mailing lists. Today they have their complete internal tree (see this article) which they have not published so far. They are using WINE in the Corel/Linux distribution though. If WINE was GPL, then nobody could keep such proprietary enhancements to themselves. Corel can use, abuse and throw away WINE, leaving nothing for the WINE community but unecessary confusion. The BSD license is simply too naive for this world, and its inteded 'bigger freedom' actually results in more abuse! The sad fact is that freedom cannot be guaranteed without weapons, and the GPL is the protective 'weapon' to keep free code freed. Microsoft has analyzed this issue very accurately in the Halloween memos: the GPL is a 'next generation' license, much more 'dangerous' to Microsoft than the BSD license.
It's still not too late though - WINE could still be released under the GPL, which will prevent many types of abuses. We can only hope that WINE developers understand these issues.
--Coke
He wasn't terribly articulate perhaps, but he does have a very valid point. If patents continue to hamper innovation and development in the United States, places with less draconian patent legislation, or even just more responsible patent offices, will benefit. This could result in the United States falling quickly behind our overseas counterparts.
... :-)
Gratuitious MS-slam: It doesn't help that MS products are giving the US a reputation for producing shoddy software, either
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Everyone needs to do a little research before getting excited here.
First, Corel will not drop Wine any time in the near future. Wine is the most important part of Corel's business strategy over the next couple years. It allows them to port all their windows applications to Linux quickly and maintain these ports easily. This will be the first time Corel will improve its revenues in years, and it will be dramatic. From a revenue standpoint, I think Wine is more important to Corel than their new Corel Linux distro or the GraphOn partnership, at least in the short term. From a Linux user standpoint, it means we can all have a high-quality, stable office suite (and graphics suite) running natively under Linux very soon.
Graphon makes a line of products which allow software to run on a server running operating system Y by a client on a machine running OS Z, where Y and Z can be Windows, Unix/Linux, or Java. Obviously this is A GOOD THING, since it will help break the Microsoft monopoly and allow people more flexibility. It is also key for ASP's, which Sun and Microsoft are fighting for, but Graphon and Corel beat them to. Note that Corel originally wrote some of Graphon's products and traded it to Graphon earlier this year for 20% equity in Graphon. This is why Corel and Graphon have such a good relationship, which will be a good thing for anybody who wants to work outside of Microsoft's box.
As for GraphOn, Corel, Linux, and China - this is a good thing. It means a lot more people will be using Linux and a non-Microsoft office suite.
As for GraphOn's stupid patent on X clients on Windows, they aren't the first company to have a very dumb and indefendable patent.
Today's press release means that users of Corel Linux will be able to remotely run Windows applications on Corel Linux by connecting to a Windows application server. This is analogous to sitting at one Linux machine and logging into another to run a graphical application over X. Except in this case, you're sitting in front of Linux running some Windows app made by a company who doesn't care about Linux users and won't port to Linux. So, this too is A GOOD THING for Linux and Linux users:)
One last point: Anything which is bad for Microsoft is good for Corel. Corel is competing head to head with Microsoft on office suites which is the majority of Corel's revenue. Thus, anything which undermines Microsoft's monopoly will help Corel get market share. So Corel will happily help Linux, application serving, etc. even if it doesn't directly bring revenue to Corel just because every new Linux user is another person who may buy Corel Office instead of Microsoft Office. It is not clear that Corel will make any money off of its new Linux distribution, but they created a new Linux distro because they saw that no other distro was easy enough to use by most people. And they released their improvements (except 3rd party stuff) as GPL, since Corel wants people to use Linux, whether it is Corel Linux, Red Hat Linux, etc.
Dan
Nearly a year ago Corel sold GraphOn their technology for allowing remote access to Windows boxes in a platform neutral way. This announced agreement would appear to be based on that old event. Corel would presumably prefer it if you used Linux. But if you have a legacy Windows application that must be run, Corel wants that not to be a barrier.
:-)
Pluse Corel does partly own GraphOn, so what is good for GraphOn is good for Corel.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Nearly a year ago Corel sold GraphOn their technology for allowing remote access to Windows boxes in a platform neutral way. This announced agreement would appear to be based on that old event. Corel would presumably prefer it if you used Linux. But if you have a legacy Windows application that must be run, Corel wants that not to be a barrier.
:-)
Pluse Corel does partly own GraphOn, so what is good for GraphOn is good for Corel.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
First off, this article is *totally* irresponsible on Justin's part for not doing any research. The GraphOn product has *NOTHING TO DO* with Wine. They aren't even competitive. Wine lets you run and port Windows apps. GraphOn's thing is a VNC clone that lets you display Windows apps remotely, while running them on real Windows.
:) Maybe that'll light a fire under the Opera guys ;-)
And secondly, for the love of Christ, *change the Wine topic icon*. The Wine project has had a real, official logo that's much nicer looking for 2 years now. See http://www.winehq.com/.
PS: about the browser wars: some other developers got MSIE 5 displaying images over the weekend, so now you can do real surfing in it
-Ian, in the Wine AUTHORS file and damn proud.
It's a way of allowing one to display remotely Windows applications.
That means that in order to use it, you have to have two boxes:
This is not an emulation; you require an NT box on which to run the application. No emulation involved.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
On the other hand, there is a sizable body of applications that need to be able to run on all of:
This actually makes it more possible to build a decent emulation; if Microsoft changes the APIs too much, particularly in the direction of "breaking if you're not doing things exactly the way we want you to today," this will break code that already needs to run on four (or more) distinct Microsoft platforms.
It wouldn't do to assume that this makes it necessarily easy to track MSFT changes, but it is certainly the case that it gets harder over time for MSFT to make changes.
The cool thing about WINE is that it potentially provides a way for some of that "bad old Windows code" to get redeployed using libWine to run natively on a UNIX. Obviously with some uncertainty as to the likelihood of that turning into billions of lines of UNIX-based apps...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Me GPL-ing WINE does not prevent the abuse of freedom I was talking about. A theoretical Leach Corporation could still take WINE and rename it to 'Accelerated WINE, The Ultimate Emulator Much Better Than Plain WINE', equip it with a few proprietary bells and whistels and trivial enhancements. Sounds familiar?
--Coke