RE: How to determine if an application is running in Wine environ ment?

[Raghavan Gurumurthy]

The purpose of my question was to make sure that wherever we are doing
changes to the product code to work-around limitations in Wine, we are doing
so only when running on Wine. And, before you (or anyone else) send further
flame mail, note that we are submitting fixes to Wine as and when we run
into them and have a solution.

We are not trying to limit the product in anyway on Linux - if any, we are
trying to make sure that the end-user experience for our product when
running on Linux is as painless and seamless as possible.

So, stop being so paranoid!

== Raghavan

-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Walker [mailto:[e-mail]] 
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 5:13 PM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: How to determine if an application is running in Wine
environment?

Hold on...
Let's pretend that a particular software manufacturer decides that running
thier software under wine is no in the best intrest of the company. Or
better yet, decides that if the program isn't running under a true Microsoft
windows It will you that running program XYZ under Wine is illigal (Due to
click-wrap licence agreement). Can you safely remove that key so that
"menie" programs like that don't know where they are.

Remeber DR-DOS and Win3.1?

--- Bill Medland  wrote:
> On June 9, 2004 10:07 am, Raghavan Gurumurthy wrote:
> > BlankIf i want to do some special handling inside
>
> my Windows executable
> > when running in Wine environment, what is the best
>
> way to do this?
> > Thanks,
>
> Unless things have changed, I think the normal suggestion is to look 
> for the HKLM/Software/Wine registry key
> --
> Bill Medland
> mailto:[e-mail]
> http://webhome.idirect.com/~kbmed

How to determine if an application is running in Wine environ ment?

[Chris Morgan]

Not being paranoid or anything I'd be curious as to what kinds of things you 
are trying to work around.  It would be interesting to see in which cases 
bugs were worked around vs. fixed and which areas were the biggest problems.

Chris

On Thursday 10 June 2004 8:36 pm, Raghavan Gurumurthy wrote:
> The purpose of my question was to make sure that wherever we are doing
> changes to the product code to work-around limitations in Wine, we are
> doing so only when running on Wine. And, before you (or anyone else) send
> further flame mail, note that we are submitting fixes to Wine as and when
> we run into them and have a solution.
>
> We are not trying to limit the product in anyway on Linux - if any, we are
> trying to make sure that the end-user experience for our product when
> running on Linux is as painless and seamless as possible.
>
> So, stop being so paranoid!
>
> == Raghavan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joshua Walker [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 5:13 PM
> To: [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: How to determine if an application is running in Wine
> environment?
>
> Hold on...
> Let's pretend that a particular software manufacturer decides that running
> thier software under wine is no in the best intrest of the company. Or
> better yet, decides that if the program isn't running under a true
> Microsoft windows It will you that running program XYZ under Wine is
> illigal (Due to click-wrap licence agreement). Can you safely remove that
> key so that "menie" programs like that don't know where they are.
>
> Remeber DR-DOS and Win3.1?
>
> --- Bill Medland  wrote:
> > On June 9, 2004 10:07 am, Raghavan Gurumurthy wrote:
> > > BlankIf i want to do some special handling inside
> >
> > my Windows executable
> > > when running in Wine environment, what is the best
> >
> > way to do this?
> > > Thanks,
> >
> > Unless things have changed, I think the normal suggestion is to look
> > for the HKLM/Software/Wine registry key
> > --
> > Bill Medland
> > mailto:[e-mail]
> > http://webhome.idirect.com/~kbmed

How to determine if an application is running in Wine environ ment?

[Joshua Walker]

It's not paranoia. It raises a intresting facet about
how Microsoft has reacted in the past when it's cash
cow runs on foreign architecture.

It was a though experiment and ment in no way to be
accusatory in nature.

The fact of the matter is this.

I am willing to bet my Kawori Manabe poster on my
wall that when WINE becomes a viable alternative to
Microsoft's own API, they are going to try everything
in thier power to keep thier applications from running
on it. Everything from click through licences to
outright FUD when you run the program.

Let me site a little example.

I used to work for an ISP a few years ago. We used
SunOS for the core systems and placed Linux on the
peripherals for webhosting. We had discoverd that if
you attempted to use Microsoft's Frontpage extentions
on a webserver that did not use them, you would get an
error message in Fronpage telling you that you should
*Switch you ISP to someone who deployed IIS*

Think about that; Microsoft is telling *our* customers
to leave us because we didn't support thier
proprietary extentions.

In the end we bought small IIS cluster to deal with
that kind of garbarge.

I'm not paranoid, if anything just a little jaded,
With Longhon delayed until 2007 at least, there as
this amazing window of opportunity for WINE, and Linux
for that matter, to fill the void.

Microsoft is going to try everything in it's power to
detect and thwart the WINE environment with thier own
software.

It would be trivial for MS to say, "Thank you for
buying Microsift WOW! 2006, you are not authorized to
copy the program from the CD-ROM to a WINE environment
and doing so will constitute a violation of copyright,
punishable by a maximum term of five years in prison
and a $250,000 fine. Click here to exit the install
program"

So now you are a criminal for running Microsoft
software in a way Microsoft doesn't want you to.

I may be exaggerating a little, but I didn't think
they would throw a Russan programmer into prision for
telling how to defeat PDF encryption in the US either.

Just some foor for thought: The partial upshot is that
there might be room for the ability to mask wine's
footprint in the system for compatibility purposes.

Then again, MS could always to a checksum on some
system DLLS just to make sure as well.

-Joshua

--- Raghavan Gurumurthy hath scribed...
> We are not trying to limit the product in anyway on
> Linux - if any, we are
> trying to make sure that the end-user experience for
> our product when
> running on Linux is as painless and seamless as
> possible.
>
> So, stop being so paranoid!
>
> == Raghavan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joshua Walker [mailto:[e-mail]] 
> Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 5:13 PM
> To: [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: How to determine if an application is
> running in Wine
> environment?
>
> Hold on...
> Let's pretend that a particular software
> manufacturer decides that running
> thier software under wine is no in the best intrest
> of the company. Or
> better yet, decides that if the program isn't
> running under a true Microsoft
> windows It will you that running program XYZ under
> Wine is illigal (Due to
> click-wrap licence agreement). Can you safely remove
> that key so that
> "menie" programs like that don't know where they
> are.
>
> Remeber DR-DOS and Win3.1?
>
> --- Bill Medland 
> wrote:
> > On June 9, 2004 10:07 am, Raghavan Gurumurthy
>
> wrote:
> > > BlankIf i want to do some special handling
>
> inside
> > my Windows executable
> > > when running in Wine environment, what is the
>
> best
> > way to do this?
> > > Thanks,
> >
> > Unless things have changed, I think the normal
>
> suggestion is to look
> > for the HKLM/Software/Wine registry key
> >
> > Bill Medland
> > mailto:[e-mail]
> > http://webhome.idirect.com/~kbmed

How to determine if an application is running in Wine environ ment?

[Izak Burger]

Joshua Walker wrote:
> I may be exaggerating a little, but I didn't think
> they would throw a Russan programmer into prision for
> telling how to defeat PDF encryption in the US either.

Yeah, boy I'm glad I live in Africa.  Case in point: some oke had a car 
registration here: "Nazi WP" (WP == western province).  Of course some 
people was a little unhappy about that.  But the amazing thing is the 
whole issue was solved without a single court case.  Don't think that is 
possible in the lawyer invested US of A
> Then again, MS could always to a checksum on some
> system DLLS just to make sure as well.

Probably not, they have to release fixes of their own DLL's quite often 
too   The only "lasting" thing they can do is make it illegal, anything 
"technical" they do will be defeated eventually, you just have to figure 
out what they did and do the same thing.

Cheers,
Izak

How to determine if an application is running in Wine environ ment?

[hatky]

> Probably not, they have to release fixes of their own DLL's quite often 
> too   The only "lasting" thing they can do is make it illegal, anything 
> "technical" they do will be defeated eventually, you just have to figure 
> out what they did and do the same thing.

Did you hear of the MSN Messanger vs ICQ war?
Ms wanted to connect to icq and allow there users to chat with ICQ users, ICQ 
didn't want since it was kind of a one way connection and a leaching on their 
network, both sideds patched and relaesed thier programmes about 6 times in 
2hr, Ms then gave up for some reason :)

Just noteing, don't expect that to happen any time some with wine...