On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 21:54:39 +0100, Susheel Daswani sdaswani@boalthall.berkeley.edu wrote:
Jeremy, I am sorry if my remarks troubled you. Perhaps my meaning didn't come across as intended? I didn't mean to imply that WINE is not currently useful or has an impossible task. I believe just the opposite - that WINE is useful and it can, one day, achieve 100% Windows compatibility. Though I do believe that given the consent decree that was adopted, WINE's job was not made much easier. I am simply trying to figure out what would be the best aid to the WINE effort.
Thanks! Susheel
On 11/19/05, Jeremy White jwhite@winehq.org wrote:
My belief (which opposes the 'fact' stated above) is that if there was virtually complete documentation of what exists, and full disclosure of additions and modifications, a cloning could be achieved. Of course it would take a huge capital and time investment, but the payoff would likely be worth it.
Well, it's lovely to know that we don't exist <grin>.
To be honest, I'm a bit troubled by your remark. I think Wine is a lot further along than you, and most other people, seem to realize; further, we're not just lazing around waiting for help.
.....
I think that attaining 100% compatability is almost by definition unachievable. However reaching a _useful_ and usable degree of compatability is not far off.
I wrote a fairly complex windows app. a several years ago using delphi 2 and even 3 or 4 years ago it worked almost completely on wine at that time.
I tested again last year and the only thing that did not work was some fancy degraded frame borders that were developed more by trial and error than by documented features.
It seems to me that the major challenge to wine now is move from a constant train of development/regression to a more stable improvement without breakage.
That seems to be well understood by the developers.
That task could have been made a lot more attainable had the courts/JD been more effective in handling the anti-trust case.
Wine is a very valuable stop-gap resource for people/businesses wishing to bridge the gap to a more reliable OS but finding the path barred by the need to deal with M$-only formatted correspondance.
The number of disgruntled users has already reached critical mass.
The only real barrier that remains is for sufficient number of businesses and administrations to adopt a strategy where it is no longer acceptable to publish and transmit documents in a format that forces the recipient to have the lastest version of M$ office to read and modify a document.
If the judicial system wishes to intervene it should be at this level , not trying coerse M$ to play fair with rules and judgements that they will already have worked around before they are decreed.
There is already an increasing body of local and national authorities in US,Europe and elsewhere that realise being totally dependant on a single, closed-source OS is unhealthy and inappropriate to their function.
Maybe Wine could pull in some funding if it could demonstrate a feasable interim solution.