Hello All,
My name is Jonathan Clark, and I work with a team on a project that has some similarities with Wine. The project is called Thinstall (http://thinstall.com), and on first glance similarities may not be apparent. Thinstall allows Win32 applications to run (on Windows) from a network share or usb flash drive with zero install. It isn't meant to allow applications to run cross platform like wine, but it is similar in that it replaces the Windows loader for loading EXEs & DLLs, doing things like mapping, imports, and thread/process management. It also replaces ~400 Win32 api functions in order to allow applications to run instantly in a sandbox so they don't need to touch the local filesystem or registry. Our approach is all in user mode so that applications can run under any login account without needing admin rights or drivers. Thinstall packages the entire application into a single EXE file and then tacks on it's runtime (300k on disk) so apps can be distributed and run as a single file that doesn't need to decompress to disk.
The challenges in creating Thinstall are many of the same ones that Wine faces, achieving a high degree of compatibility in replacement functions means you need to be good at debugging and understanding the internals of Windows. Since most code can be run by multiple threads, it is also important to understand thread safety and have a lot of experience working through these types of issues.
Thinstall is now about 6 years old and we are coming up on a version 3.0 release. Thinstall is a commercial product and everyone works full time with funding coming from our customers. Recently we've done fairly well financially and have the opportunity to try to take the product and company to the next level by hiring a couple of senior engineers. This brings me to why I'm posting here..
If you are experienced with Windows internals, have experience reimplementing Win32 APIs, and you are interested in some contract or full-time work please let me know. We are located in San Francisco, California (awesome town) and ideally I'd like to work with people locally. We can help with a move if needed. Otherwise, if you are outside of the USA - we could talk about doing something remotely.
I hope to hear from you.
Best Regards,
Jonathan Clark
P.S. As background info, I used to be heavily in the linux space when I co-founded a video game company "Crack dot com" which made the linux port of Doom & Quake as well as developed the original titles Abuse and Golgotha. I have been aware of wine for a long long time and I'm impressed by the quality of work by all the developers and how far it has come.
P.S.S. I subscribed in digest mode so if you reply to the list, keep in mind I won't see it until tomorrow.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006, 2:59:59 PM, Jonathan Clark wrote:
Hello All,
My name is Jonathan Clark, and I work with a team on a project that has
I think it's a really really really rude to write to an open source project and offer such a work. Basically you are _stealing_ developers from the project. Because with your closed source project such developer will be prohibited from participating in the Wine project.
Unless of course you want to open source your project and release it under at least GPL licence.
Vitaliy.
It's up to individual developers to decide whether or not to work on a project that precludes them from contributing to particular OSS projects. It might be slightly off topic but there haven't been a lot of job offer emails to wine-devel lately or ever.
Chris
On Tuesday 20 June 2006 9:32 pm, Vitaliy Margolen wrote:
Tuesday, June 20, 2006, 2:59:59 PM, Jonathan Clark wrote:
Hello All,
My name is Jonathan Clark, and I work with a team on a project that has
I think it's a really really really rude to write to an open source project and offer such a work. Basically you are _stealing_ developers from the project. Because with your closed source project such developer will be prohibited from participating in the Wine project.
Unless of course you want to open source your project and release it under at least GPL licence.
Vitaliy.
Lots of open source developers probably still have day jobs. Maybe they're looking for a new one.
Vitaliy Margolen wrote:
Tuesday, June 20, 2006, 2:59:59 PM, Jonathan Clark wrote:
Hello All,
My name is Jonathan Clark, and I work with a team on a project that has
I think it's a really really really rude to write to an open source project and offer such a work. Basically you are _stealing_ developers from the project. Because with your closed source project such developer will be prohibited from participating in the Wine project.
Unless of course you want to open source your project and release it under at least GPL licence.
Vitaliy.
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:32:11 -0600, Vitaliy Margolen wrote:
Basically you are _stealing_ developers from the project. Because with your closed source project such developer will be prohibited from participating in the Wine project.
A very specific legal interpretation that would require the company behind Thinstall to want to hurt the Wine project .... be careful, none of us are lawyers here.
On Friday 23 June 2006 22:50, Mike Hearn wrote:
A very specific legal interpretation that would require the company behind Thinstall to want to hurt the Wine project .... be careful, none of us are lawyers here.
That's not entirely true.
On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 08:27:10 +1000, Troy Rollo wrote:
On Friday 23 June 2006 22:50, Mike Hearn wrote:
A very specific legal interpretation that would require the company behind Thinstall to want to hurt the Wine project .... be careful, none of us are lawyers here.
That's not entirely true.
We have IP lawyers on wine-devel? Can you say who?
thanks -mike
On Wednesday 28 June 2006 02:11, Mike Hearn wrote:
On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 08:27:10 +1000, Troy Rollo wrote:
On Friday 23 June 2006 22:50, Mike Hearn wrote:
careful, none of us are lawyers here.
That's not entirely true.
We have IP lawyers on wine-devel? Can you say who?
I'm a non-practising lawyer, and my training does include IP law. There may be one or two others lurking - as I recall there were some others on the wine-legal list before it was shut down.
Jonathan Clark wrote:
replaces the Windows loader for loading EXEs & DLLs, doing things like mapping, imports, and thread/process management. It also replaces ~400 Win32 api functions
"We're currently borrowing code from the Wine project..."
with funding coming from our customers. Recently we've done fairly well financially and have the opportunity to try to take the product and company to the next level by hiring a couple of senior engineers. This brings me to why I'm posting here..
"...which we're having good commercial success with, so now we'd like to knick a couple of developers from the project, too! Sign-up forms here."
Or did I completely misread your posting? :-D
Judging by the two negative reactions, apparently I didn't follow protocol for posting to the list and I want to apologize for that. I understand how it can look from a different perspective. I checked with the #wine-hackers channel first and those guys were very friendly. We had a great discussion and when I mentioned we were looking for developers they suggested I post here.
Thanks for your time and consideration,
Jonathan
* Jonathan Clark jclark@thinstall.com [20/06/06, 23:35:26]:
Judging by the two negative reactions, apparently I didn't follow protocol for posting to the list and I want to apologize for that. I understand how it can look from a different perspective. I checked with the #wine-hackers channel first and those guys were very friendly. We had a great discussion and when I mentioned we were looking for developers they suggested I post here.
Thanks for your time and consideration,
I wouldn't necessarily judge the whole list by just two negative reactions. It's interesting to see that with my wine experience there might be jobs out there working on something similar. (Not that I'm interested right now, I'm still at university...)
I'm sure you're aware that in every open source project, there's people who oppose commercial software development for philosophical reasons.
As for stealing developers, I think the terms of contract could make sure that the developer is free to work on wine in his spare time, but that's a thing for people interested in the job to take care of.
The same people who proposed to post here will still back up that proposal, even if they don't speak up now.
Cheers, Kai
Hi,
On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 07:27:28PM +0200, Kai Blin wrote:
I wouldn't necessarily judge the whole list by just two negative reactions. It's interesting to see that with my wine experience there might be jobs out there working on something similar. (Not that I'm interested right now, I'm still at university...)
I'm sure you're aware that in every open source project, there's people who oppose commercial software development for philosophical reasons.
"proprietary" please, not "commercial". HUGE difference.
As for those people even opposing commercial development: go wherever I don't need to see you ;)
As for stealing developers, I think the terms of contract could make sure that the developer is free to work on wine in his spare time, but that's a thing for people interested in the job to take care of.
Indeed. If the conditions are fine OSS-wise then I don't see a reason to complain. More offers is always a good thing :)
Andreas Mohr
Wednesday, June 21, 2006, 11:41:32 AM, Andreas Mohr wrote:
Hi,
On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 07:27:28PM +0200, Kai Blin wrote:
I wouldn't necessarily judge the whole list by just two negative reactions. It's interesting to see that with my wine experience there might be jobs out there working on something similar. (Not that I'm interested right now, I'm still at university...)
I'm sure you're aware that in every open source project, there's people who oppose commercial software development for philosophical reasons.
"proprietary" please, not "commercial". HUGE difference.
I was talking more about nature of the job. I'm sure that lots of Wine code can "leak" into commercial product and wise versa.
As for those people even opposing commercial development: go wherever I don't need to see you ;)
There are such people? If so, my guess would be 99.99% of them never wrote a line of code.
Vitaliy
On Wednesday 21 June 2006 21:24, Vitaliy Margolen wrote:
Wednesday, June 21, 2006, 11:41:32 AM, Andreas Mohr wrote:
Hi,
On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 07:27:28PM +0200, Kai Blin wrote:
I wouldn't necessarily judge the whole list by just two negative reactions. It's interesting to see that with my wine experience there might be jobs out there working on something similar. (Not that I'm interested right now, I'm still at university...)
I'm sure you're aware that in every open source project, there's people who oppose commercial software development for philosophical reasons.
"proprietary" please, not "commercial". HUGE difference.
I was talking more about nature of the job. I'm sure that lots of Wine code can "leak" into commercial product and wise versa.
What's worse is that it already DID happen, ane the party involved didn't think much of it (remember Poject David?) But this has little to do with the matter at hand.
I doubt that Thinstall would really want to do anything illegal -- this woul,d ruin their reputation, and would likely expose them to a copyright lawsuit(s). We can only level accusations after they do wrong. Why should we a priori think of them as guilty?
I think that while Vitaliy has some firm moral (and otherwise) viewpoints, the Thinstall bashing of his was a bit much.
C'mon, they just politely asked if anyone is interested in a job. What's wrong with that? If I were looking for winapi hackers, I'd ask here myself. Jeez.
Cheers, Kuba
Friday, June 23, 2006, 9:51:28 AM, Kuba Ober wrote:
On Wednesday 21 June 2006 21:24, Vitaliy Margolen wrote:
Wednesday, June 21, 2006, 11:41:32 AM, Andreas Mohr wrote:
Hi,
On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 07:27:28PM +0200, Kai Blin wrote:
I wouldn't necessarily judge the whole list by just two negative reactions. It's interesting to see that with my wine experience there might be jobs out there working on something similar. (Not that I'm interested right now, I'm still at university...)
I'm sure you're aware that in every open source project, there's people who oppose commercial software development for philosophical reasons.
"proprietary" please, not "commercial". HUGE difference.
I was talking more about nature of the job. I'm sure that lots of Wine code can "leak" into commercial product and wise versa.
What's worse is that it already DID happen, ane the party involved didn't think much of it (remember Poject David?) But this has little to do with the matter at hand.
I doubt that Thinstall would really want to do anything illegal -- this woul,d ruin their reputation, and would likely expose them to a copyright lawsuit(s). We can only level accusations after they do wrong. Why should we a priori think of them as guilty?
I think that while Vitaliy has some firm moral (and otherwise) viewpoints, the Thinstall bashing of his was a bit much.
C'mon, they just politely asked if anyone is interested in a job. What's wrong with that? If I were looking for winapi hackers, I'd ask here myself. Jeez.
I'm sorry that my intentions were misinterpreted because of the bad choice of words on my part.
I didn't want to sound that negative. What I wanted to say, is that the nature of the Wine (windows internals) and Thinstall (internal knowledge of windows) are some what close. So it's kind of a thin line that I'm sure neither side wants to cross.
As for the job offers - I wish you good luck finding the right person for the job. And for a Wine hacker to finally be able to pay his/hers bills. IMHO the project's developer's mailing list is not the right place to send such offers.
PS: Again this is all IMHO and in no way should represent opinions of anyone else.
Vitaliy.
Jonathan Clark wrote:
Judging by the two negative reactions
Based on the expressive smiley in my posting, I'd hardly consider it negative.
It was more of a well-meaning joke, but perhaps also one that told how your posting could be interpreted.
I *would* find it interesting to know how much inspiration you guys find in the Wine codebase, though.
Have you thought about collaborating with the Wine project instead of hiring people from it? Since Thinstall versus the Wine project are not exactly targeting the same markets, collaboration on API development could be fruitful for both parties.
(Oh, and I'm not exactly a Wine developer either, so no reason to take my comments too seriously.)
Hiya Jonathon,
I wouldn't worry too much about the negative reactions there, which is a shame. As Molle has pointed out he is not really a Wine developer. I am and I'd say that it's totally fine to post such a job advert here, I'm sure there are people here who would like to find a good job with their skills.
I hope you fill the position soon! Good luck!
thanks -mike
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 13:59:59 -0700, Jonathan Clark wrote:
My name is Jonathan Clark, and I work with a team on a project that has some similarities with Wine. The project is called Thinstall (http://thinstall.com), and on first glance similarities may not be apparent.
-
Andreas Mohr -
Chris Morgan -
Jonathan Clark -
Joseph Garvin -
Kai Blin -
Kuba Ober -
Mike Hearn -
Molle Bestefich -
Troy Rollo -
Vitaliy Margolen