Approving of the WINEprobe initiative

[David Gümbel]

Hello everybody,





- as my colleague Stefan Munz has already pointed out recently[1] on this 
list, Wirtschaftsförderung Region Stutgart GmbH (WRS) and us (ITOMIG) are 
launching an initiative called WINEprobe[2]. Its goal is to make local 
software vendors aware of the potential bussiness opportunity in a 
WINE-based port or a WINE/Linux version of their software. 

WRS is quite committed as far as Open Source is concerned[3], and is pushing 
OSS in the region since quite a time. It has co-organized, among others, 
the KDE World Summit 2004 in Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart[4]. The 
Perlworkshop 6.0 , GUADEC6 (GNOME Conference) [5], ApacheCon Europe and 
more than 40 other Open Source Events in the Stuttgart Region are organized 
or supported by the WRS as well. (You can find a description of WRS at the 
bottom of this mail.)

In order to make the WINEprobe initiative beneficial for the WINE project as 
much as possible, three things are in the making:

1) At the option of the respective software vendor whose product we'll be 
analyzing for WINE compatibility, Application Database Entries will be 
maintained by us once a software product has been analyzed for its 
compatibility with WINE.

2) Reports of successful porting or migration projects will be given back to 
the community as success stories. My colleage is already working on merging 
some success stories supplied by third parties (see [6]). 

3) WRS has offered to help out in hosting the WINE developers conference 
Wineconf in 2005 in the Stuttgart area[7].


Mr. Schmid from WRS has asked me (please see the mail below) to provide some 
information about this initiative to the WINE community. He thinks (and I 
agree ;) that it would help us a great deal in making the campaign a 
success if the WINE community somehow "officially" (as official as a 
community can be :) approved of this initiative. So my question, on behalf 
of Mr. Schmid, is simply if there are objections against us saying that 
this initiative is approved of by the WINE community?

As an important sidenote, I permit myself to emphasize that all of our above 
mentioned efforts (1-3) to support the WINE project and its community are 
fully independent of the answer of this question. Most particularily, the 
hosting offer stands, and the commitment there won't be lowered if the 
WINEprobe is not approved of by the community. However, I feel that a 
successful WINEprobe will be a benefit for the WINE project as well.

If there are any questions open, please feel free to ask.




Cheers,




David



----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: AW: Update on WRS offer & Stuttgart University
Date: Montag 20 Dezember 2004 14:46
From: "Hans-Ulrich Schmid" <hans-ulrich.schmid(a)region-stuttgart.de>
To: David Gümbel <david.guembel(a)itomig.de>

Dear Mr. Gümbel,

as you know, ITOMIG and Stuttgart Region is planning to start a new
 initiative for small and medium software companies called "WINEprobe".
 "WINEprobe" will help these companies to learn more about the
 WINE-compatibility of their software products.

It would be very helpful, if you can ask the WINE-community to support this
 new initiative officially. The hosting offer of the Stuttgart Region will
 not be affected by any way of the decision of the community in the point
 of supporting the "WINEprobe" or not. Can you please forward this mail to
 the community and tell them some more about the background of "WINEprobe"

Best regards

Hans-Ulrich Schmid

Wirtschaftsförderung Region Stuttgart GmbH
Stuttgart Region Economic Development Corporation
FIR_st - Forum IT-Region Stuttgart

Friedrichstr. 10
70174 Stuttgart

www.first.region-stuttgart.de
www.opensource.region-stuttgart.de
www.competenzatlas.de
www.region-stuttgart.de
Tel ++49.711.22835 - 27
Tel mobil ++49.172.7310463
Fax ++49.711.22835 - 55

-------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------
WRS description:

The Stuttgart Region Economic Development Corporation (WRS) is

- founded to provide services to industry and communities in the field of 
economic development
- a subsidiary of the administrative body of the larger Stuttgart Region
- provides marketing for the Stuttgart Region
- assists in cluster management of specific industries
- advises and assists companies during the search for available sites and 
buildings

In the context of our initiative "Open Source Region Stuttgart" 
http://opensource.region-stuttgart.de the WRS supports conferences and 
meetings of Open Source projects of various aspects when held in the 
Stuttgart Region. For example the WRS is co-organizer of the KDE Community 
World Summit 2004 in Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart 
http://conference2004.kde.org/ . The Perlworkshop 6.0 , GUADEC6 (GNOME 
Conference) http://2005.guadec.org/papers.html , ApacheCon Europe and more 
than 40 other Open Source Events in the Stuttgart Region are organized or 
supported by the WRS as well.

-------------------------------------------------------




[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/wine-devel%40winehq.org/msg11549.html
[2] WINEprobe means be something like WINEtasting in english an maybe 
    "degustation de WINE" in french. 
[3] See http://opensource.region-stuttgart.de/ (.de only, sorry)
[4] http://conference2004.kde.org/
[5] http://2005.guadec.org/papers.html
[6] http://www.mail-archive.com/wine-devel%40winehq.org/msg11630.html
[7] http://www.winehq.org/hypermail/wine-devel/2004/11/0647.html

[Brian Vincent]

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 16:20:50 +0100, David Gümbel
<david.guembel(a)itomig.de> wrote:
> - as my colleague Stefan Munz has already pointed out recently[1] on this
> list, Wirtschaftsförderung Region Stutgart GmbH (WRS) and us (ITOMIG) are
> launching an initiative called WINEprobe[2]. Its goal is to make local
> software vendors aware of the potential bussiness opportunity in a
> WINE-based port or a WINE/Linux version of their software.

Just curious, what is ITOMIG?
> In order to make the WINEprobe initiative beneficial for the WINE project as
> much as possible, three things are in the making:

WINEprobe is an.. er.. interesting name.  Why did you choose it?  From
a marketing perspective, it doesn't seem like a good name.  In
general, the word "probe" doesn't exactly give a warm, fuzzy feeling
or generate excitement.  Is this a translation of a German word that
sounds better?

It sounds like you guys are interested in Winelib stuff.  I'm sure
you've investigated the pros/cons of that.  Did you notice the Winelib
documentation is very outdated?  Would you guys want to tackle
updating it?

-Brian Vincent

[David Gümbel]

On Montag 20 Dezember 2004 18:41, Brian Vincent wrote:
> <david.guembel(a)itomig.de> wrote:
> > - as my colleague Stefan Munz has already pointed out recently[1] on
> > this list, Wirtschaftsförderung Region Stutgart GmbH (WRS) and us
> > (ITOMIG) are launching an initiative called WINEprobe[2]. Its goal is
> > to make local software vendors aware of the potential bussiness
> > opportunity in a WINE-based port or a WINE/Linux version of their
> > software.
>
> Just curious, what is ITOMIG?

We're a local company specializing in compatibility analyses of Windows 
software with Linux/Wine. Our clients are mostly from the administrative 
and the public sector.
> > In order to make the WINEprobe initiative beneficial for the WINE
> > project as much as possible, three things are in the making:
>
> WINEprobe is an.. er.. interesting name.  Why did you choose it?  From
> a marketing perspective, it doesn't seem like a good name.  In
> general, the word "probe" doesn't exactly give a warm, fuzzy feeling
> or generate excitement.  Is this a translation of a German word that
> sounds better?

Jep, its actually a pun: WINEprobe means be something like WINEtasting in 
english an maybe "degustation de WINE" in french. It's a little hard to 
translate puns, sorry ;) Maybe this is helpful: 
http://dict.leo.org/?search=weinprobe
> It sounds like you guys are interested in Winelib stuff.  I'm sure
> you've investigated the pros/cons of that.  Did you notice the Winelib
> documentation is very outdated?  Would you guys want to tackle
> updating it?

In case this fits into a real project (say, porting some legacy application) 
we're doing e.g. in line with the WINEprobe initiative, yeah - why not. In 
general, we always try to let flow back as much as possible to the 
respective OSS projects whose software we're using.



Cheers,




David

[Brian Vincent]

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:13:00 +0100, David Gümbel
<david.guembel(a)itomig.de> wrote:
> Jep, its actually a pun: WINEprobe means be something like WINEtasting in
> english an maybe "degustation de WINE" in french. It's a little hard to
> translate puns, sorry ;) Maybe this is helpful:
> http://dict.leo.org/?search=weinprobe

I saw that reference later in the email.  That does make sense and I
guess WINEprobe is a good name.  Not so good when said in English, but
then again that doesn't really matter.  Puns are fun.  I'm sure
there's plenty of English words that don't sound so good in German :)

By the way, didn't we standardize on "Wine" rather than "WINE" a few
years ago?  Would "WineProbe" be more appropriate?

So as far as official endorsement.. I'm sure someone in the Wine
community will speak up if they disagree with anything.  (Conversely,
they won't speak up if they agree.)  The three projects you mentioned
all sound great and they're things that really should be worked on. 
So in the sense that stuff should get done - I think we all want that.
 That leads up to your question of whether the Wine community approves
of the initiative?  Well.. I'm not qualified to answer that question.

If you do contribute to Wine, we'll gladly add you to our acknowledgements page
( http://www.winehq.org/site/acknowledgement ).  Then you can say
things in press releases like, "WRS, an acknowledged Wine contributor,
....."   Anyone disagree with that idea?

-Brian Vincent

[Stefan Munz]

as my partner David Gümbel is travelling much these days and thus is badly 
online available, I thought I add a few lines here :-)
> <david.guembel(a)itomig.de> wrote:
> > Jep, its actually a pun: WINEprobe means be something like WINEtasting in
> > english an maybe "degustation de WINE" in french. It's a little hard to
> > translate puns, sorry ;) Maybe this is helpful:
> > http://dict.leo.org/?search=weinprobe
>
> I saw that reference later in the email.  That does make sense and I
> guess WINEprobe is a good name.  Not so good when said in English, but
> then again that doesn't really matter.  Puns are fun.  I'm sure
> there's plenty of English words that don't sound so good in German :)

As this is a german project, actually a swabian project ;-) it is important 
for us, that the name sounds good in german. And yes, there are some english 
alternatives that sound funny in german too or that people who only speak 
german would'nt even understand.
> By the way, didn't we standardize on "Wine" rather than "WINE" a few
> years ago?  Would "WineProbe" be more appropriate?

I think this is originally me fault as I created the first draft for this 
project. WineProbe or Wine-Probe would be at least as good as WINEProbe, so 
I'll change it this way.

<snip>
> If you do contribute to Wine, we'll gladly add you to our acknowledgements
> page ( http://www.winehq.org/site/acknowledgement ).  Then you can say
> things in press releases like, "WRS, an acknowledged Wine contributor,
> ....."   Anyone disagree with that idea?

this sounds great, but the WRS would not contribute to Wine (besides they host 
the WineConf, but the decision is still pending as far as I know), this would 
be ITOMIG. And I would appreciate the idea very much.

Stefan Munz
> -Brian Vincent

[Izak Burger]

Stefan Munz wrote:
> as my partner David Gümbel is travelling much these days and thus is badly 
> online available, I thought I add a few lines here :-)

Boy it is good to see someone struggle as much with English as I 
struggle with German :-)  Badly online?  You either mean "hardly" online 
(ie not many times, which I think would be wenig auf Deutsch) or that 
his connection speed is low.
> As this is a german project, actually a swabian project ;-) it is important 
> for us, that the name sounds good in german. And yes, there are some english 
> alternatives that sound funny in german too or that people who only speak 
> german would'nt even understand.

I think I understand.  Probe obviously means the same as "proef" in my 
mother tongue which means "to test" or "to be tested".  I don't think 
there is an English word that will do justice, and "probing" makes sense 
even in English, even if it does not generate excitement.

But that is just me, being bored at work two days before Christmas and 
looking for some email to answer...

Schönes Weinacht,
Izak
-- 
Technically speaking, if you receive this email, you are the intended
recipient.  Unless specifically stated otherwise I speak for myself.  I
am not responsible for anything you do with or without this email.  By
replying to this message you or any software agent acting on your behalf
agree that I am the intended recipient. You also agree that I shall be
free to use the contents of such a message as I see fit.

[Stefan Munz]

Am Donnerstag, 23. Dezember 2004 12:01 schrieb Izak Burger:
> Stefan Munz wrote:
> > as my partner David Gümbel is travelling much these days and thus is
> > badly online available, I thought I add a few lines here :-)
>
> Boy it is good to see someone struggle as much with English as I
> struggle with German :-)  Badly online?  You either mean "hardly" online
> (ie not many times, which I think would be wenig auf Deutsch) or that
> his connection speed is low.

I meant both and yes sometimes it's hard if your english teacher is a website 
called "leo" ;-)
> > As this is a german project, actually a swabian project ;-) it is
> > important for us, that the name sounds good in german. And yes, there are
> > some english alternatives that sound funny in german too or that people
> > who only speak german would'nt even understand.
>
> I think I understand.  Probe obviously means the same as "proef" in my
> mother tongue which means "to test" or "to be tested".  I don't think
> there is an English word that will do justice, and "probing" makes sense
> even in English, even if it does not generate excitement.

ok, that's fine.
> Schönes Weinacht,

Schöne Weihnachten ;-)
und einen guten Rutsch

Stefan
> Izak

[David Gümbel]

On Dienstag 21 Dezember 2004 05:46, Brian Vincent wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:13:00 +0100, David Gümbel
> <david.guembel(a)itomig.de> wrote:
> > Jep, its actually a pun: WINEprobe means be something like WINEtasting
> > in english an maybe "degustation de WINE" in french. It's a little hard
> > to translate puns, sorry ;) Maybe this is helpful:
> > http://dict.leo.org/?search=weinprobe
> So as far as official endorsement.. I'm sure someone in the Wine
> community will speak up if they disagree with anything.  (Conversely,
> they won't speak up if they agree.)  The three projects you mentioned
> all sound great and they're things that really should be worked on.

As the feedback has been IMO very positive (well, if we abstract over 
certain implications of the name of the initiative in english ;) and nobody 
came up with objections, I now consider it safe to say this initiative is 
being approved of by the Wine community.

I wanted to thank everybody who provided feedback and comments. Plus, a 
happy new year to all of you!



Bye,



David

[Jakob Eriksson]

David Gümbel wrote:
> Jep, its actually a pun: WINEprobe means be something like WINEtasting in

Or "vin-prov" in Swedish. Yet, I didn't make the connection, but still
thought of unwanted probing of my body.  :-)

regards,
Jakob


(The Port-Wine idea was good though.)

[Mike Hearn]

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:13:00 +0100, David Gümbel wrote:
> its actually a pun: WINEprobe means be something like WINEtasting in
> english an maybe "degustation de WINE" in french. It's a little hard to
> translate puns, sorry ;) Maybe this is helpful:
> http://dict.leo.org/?search=weinprobe

Still, I personally would rather have a name that made sense in English -
WineProbe isn't exactly intuitive. PortWine is a good name.

[David Gümbel]

Hi everybody,

Mike Hearn schrieb am 21.12.2004 um 17:33 Uhr:
> On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:13:00 +0100, David Gümbel wrote:
> > its actually a pun: WINEprobe means be something like WINEtasting in
> > english an maybe "degustation de WINE" in french. It's a little hard to
> > translate puns, sorry ;) Maybe this is helpful:
> > http://dict.leo.org/?search=weinprobe
>
> Still, I personally would rather have a name that made sense in English -
> WineProbe isn't exactly intuitive. PortWine is a good name.

Yep, I think you all made a point when saying "probe" in english is really 
not quite... optimal ;) I personally like the PortWine idea very much - 
we'll consider renaming the initiative accordingly.

By now, I wanted to thank all of you who have provided feedback and ideas. 
I will wait a little more time in case somebody who hasn't spoken up yet 
wishes to do so :)


Bye,




David

[Scott Ritchie]

On Wed, 2004-12-22 at 11:39 +0100, David Gümbel wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> Yep, I think you all made a point when saying "probe" in english is really 
> not quite... optimal ;) I personally like the PortWine idea very much - 
> we'll consider renaming the initiative accordingly.

I request 20% of all name-change related fan-mail ;)

Danke,
Scott Ritchie

[David Gümbel]

Scott Ritchie schrieb am 22.12.2004 um 12:41 Uhr:
> On Wed, 2004-12-22 at 11:39 +0100, David Gümbel wrote:
> > Hi everybody,
> >
> > Yep, I think you all made a point when saying "probe" in english is really 
> > not quite... optimal ;) I personally like the PortWine idea very much - 
> > we'll consider renaming the initiative accordingly.
>
> I request 20% of all name-change related fan-mail ;)

Sure - I hope you have a high bandwidth connection ?-)



Cheers,




David

[Scott Ritchie]

On Mon, 2004-12-20 at 16:20 +0100, David Gümbel wrote:
> 1) At the option of the respective software vendor whose product we'll be 
> analyzing for WINE compatibility, Application Database Entries will be 
> maintained by us once a software product has been analyzed for its 
> compatibility with WINE.

Excellent.  AppDB seems to be almost ready, and some dedicated developer
maintainers would be an amazing thing.
> 2) Reports of successful porting or migration projects will be given back to 
> the community as success stories. My colleage is already working on merging 
> some success stories supplied by third parties (see [6]).

> 3) WRS has offered to help out in hosting the WINE developers conference 
> Wineconf in 2005 in the Stuttgart area[7].

I'd love to head out to Stuttgart if someone would be willing to fly me
there.  As it stands I can only really afford to go on long roadtrips
about the United States.  Either way, I'm probably not that important.
> If there are any questions open, please feel free to ask.

> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
> [1] http://www.mail-archive.com/wine-devel%40winehq.org/msg11549.html
> [2] WINEprobe means be something like WINEtasting in english an maybe 
>     "degustation de WINE" in french.

I'm going to echo the sentiment that WINEprobe is a horrible name in
English.  Frankly, when I think of probes I think of aliens or doctors
doing nasty experiments on my body parts.  At best, I think of a probing
attack with troops on a battlefield.

A better name would be the alluded to WINEtasting mentioned here.  It
may be a tad cliche, but at least it doesn't drum up horrible images.

However, I think we have an opportunity to make a really crafty and
invigorating name here.  My personal favorite would be to combine the
concept of a "port" for software with the class of dessert wine known as
"port."  It would be a really delicious pun, and it would drum up the
right images.

So, yes, I support the PortWINE initiative.  :)

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie
scott(a)open-vote.org

[Christian Britz]

Scott Ritchie schrieb:
> So, yes, I support the PortWINE initiative.  :)

PortWine would be a GREAT name, english or german! :-)

Liebe Schwaben, please consider this... ;-)

BTW: I would be very happy if our community could give them some
"official" seal or mention... Especially because they seem to have some
focus on the public sector. Did you know that the public sector is
already the leading free software user in germany? Sometimes public
authorities aren't that bad at all... ;-)

Regards
Christian
Hessen ;-)
Germany