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@region-stuttgart.de To: David Gümbel david.guembel@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
On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 16:20:50 +0100, David Gümbel david.guembel@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
On Montag 20 Dezember 2004 18:41, Brian Vincent wrote:
david.guembel@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
On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:13:00 +0100, David Gümbel david.guembel@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
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@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
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
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
On Dienstag 21 Dezember 2004 05:46, Brian Vincent wrote:
On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:13:00 +0100, David Gümbel david.guembel@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
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.)
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.
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
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
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
On Mon, 2004-12-20 at 16:20 +0100, David Gümbel wrote:
- 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.
- 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]).
- 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@open-vote.org
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
-
Brian Vincent -
Christian Britz -
David Gümbel -
Izak Burger -
Jakob Eriksson -
Mike Hearn -
Scott Ritchie -
Stefan Munz