Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Catching up with Wine

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tue Apr 22, 2003 08:08 AM
from the now-isn't-that-strange dept.
Software
An anonymous reader writes "TransGaming's announcement of the availability of WineX 3.0 got a lot of pixel dust, but that wasn't the only recent news about WINE. The Microsoft monopoly also reached out to touch the project when Whil Hentzen, a leading proponent of Visual FoxPro (VFP) development on Linux, was contacted by an Microsoft manager and told it was a violation of the VFP EULA to run it on Linux." I guess thats one way to stop emulation. update Oh well, its a dupe. Whatever, it gives people something to complain about I guess ;)
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Catching up with Wine 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • This story is a duplicate. (Score:3, Informative)

    by thesolo (131008) <slap@fighttheriaa.org> on Tuesday April 22 2003, @08:10AM (#5780281) Homepage
    This was posted yesterday afternoon, right here:
    http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/21/20 45200&mode=thread&tid=109&tid=125 [slashdot.org].

  • Stop Emulation? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rinikusu (28164) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @08:12AM (#5780293)
    But but but..
    Wine
    Is
    Not an
    Emulator

    ????

    • WINE is also not a properly licensed MS OS. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Moderation abuser (184013) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @08:25AM (#5780370)
      Some of the EULAs require that the software be run on a fully licensed microsoft operating system. IIRC some of the EULAs even go as far as to require that you access the software *from* a fully licensed microsoft operating system.

      Just because you have paid for a license to use some software doesn't mean you can use it any way you like. Towel boy.

      • Re:WINE is also not a properly licensed MS OS. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sqlrob (173498) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @08:32AM (#5780405)
        Just because you have paid for a license to use some software doesn't mean you can use it any way you like

        No, they say you can't use it anyway you want. Whether or not that is legally enforceable is another question.

      • What about VMWare which lets me install windows and run it inside linux?
        What about VirtualPC which lets me run windows on my powerbook?
        Those aren't even technically emulators for windows. VMWare is a virtual machine emulator: it simply lets you boot an opearing system inside another. It doesn't have to be Windows. Likewise VirtualPC is an x86 emulator. I could just as soon install BeOS in VirtualPC last i checked. And now the final response, WINE (as we all should know WINE Is Not an Emulator, it's a
      • IANAL, but I do keep up with court cases; AFAIK there are very few valid EULAs (which appear solely online, BTW). Since the license is not presented to me until after the exchange of money for product, the doctrine of "First Sale" trumps many of the onerous "can't do that" clauses in EULAs. (See Softman v. Adobe [freerepublic.com].) When the fair use copying (to include space-shifting) is included, one can argue that an EULA is not required for use of software, despite the fact that copying or stated agreement-implying actions may take place. Since I bought the product to use it, my use of the product is not consent to an agreement (likewise, my exercise of fair use space shifting does not imply consent); therefore, since I have neither clearly stated an agreement to the license nor do I believe the EULA listed by boxed software (neither print nor digital) is valid, I do not feel bound by their conditions. (My actions are instead regulated by traditional copyright law, which still forbids redistrobution, modification, and multiple simultanious users.)

        Even were the above false, VFP is produced by Microsoft. I would argue that this clause represents illegal (monopolistic) tying of the application product to Microsoft's operating systems.

      • Re:WINE is also not a properly licensed MS OS. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by sheldon (2322) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @10:35AM (#5781386)
        This isn't about a EULA.

        The problem is in order for this guy to get FoxPro to run under WINE he had to copy system DLLs from Windows.

        It's a pure copyright violation.
    • yes, and

      SLAshdot
      Seldom
      Has
      Dupes
      On a
      Topic

    • more like this (Score:3, Insightful)

      by twitter (104583)
      It's more like they decided not to call it a "WINdows Emulator", but anyone can see that it is.

      You will have a hard time convincing anyone that they should not be able to use the software they purchased under another OS. Monkeyshines like this from Microsoft are just another good reason to not make the purchase in the first place. I got my junky old win98 sitting in the corner and it is rarely used.

      • (a) Its not an emulator because it does not have to emulate anything, when you run a windows program its the actually program doing its thing. Relevant Example: Freebsd does not have a Linux Emulator, it has Linux binary compatibility much like how Wine works.

        (b) Doesn't Oracle say something like you can't run Oracle for Linux on any other operating system (mainly to stop people from running it on FreeBSD)? I remember this the case a few years ago...

        -dk

  • Life EULA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lexcyber (133454) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @08:12AM (#5780299) Homepage
    There is in the life EULA a section about not beeing a prick against your fellow humans. I think working at MS violates it.


    Christ.... It is a sick sick world when you 1. pay many dollars for your software 2. after paying many dollars, not allowed to use it in new innovative ways.

    • Re:Life EULA (Score:3, Funny)

      by Raul654 (453029)
      Forunately, I never pay for software. Or books. Or movies. Or games. Or music. Thank god for p2p :)

      • Re:Life EULA (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Kombat (93720)
        Now that's something to be proud of. I like the smiley you put at the end, too, as if being a theif is funny. Let's see if you're still laughing when your car is stolen. You see, I never pay for cars. Or food. Or gas.

        Question though - assuming you eventually leave elementary school, where's the money to pay you going to come from if everyone is like you, and is just stealing everything? Who's going to make new movies, computer games, or CDs if everyone is just stealing them online, like you do?

        Bah,

        • Re:Life EULA (Score:4, Interesting)

          by __past__ (542467) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @09:12AM (#5780674)
          God, how many times do we have to hear this stupid argument again.

          Copying is not stealing. If you steal my car, I cannot drive it any more. If I copy a song, the original owner still can listen to it. Even if in both cases the victim sufferes financial losses, they are different - if I burn your house down, I'm still not a thief, even if you'd loose lots of money and other property because of it.

          Not that "filesharing" would be legal, it's just that modern legal systems are advanced enough to feature more than one kind of crime.

            • "I'd personally prefer if people who take this line didn't associate with Free software groups like the FSF. It is non-sensicle arguments like this one that give Free software authors a bad name, and that doesn't help anyone."

              You do realize that many kids growing up today don't see any difference between going to freshmeat and downloading some apps and visiting Kazaa and downloading some apps? Both places you just do a search and click on the download link.

              Its all just a few mouse clicks away and getting
        • I never pay for online entertainment, and it's all legal. I don't watch movies online. Music: check out etree [etree.org]. Books: check out Project Gutenberg [promo.net]. Games: check out nethack [nethack.org]. Software: keep reading this site.

          Most of my entertainment does come in the "real" world though, and does cost money.

    • Re:Life EULA (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ch-chuck (9622)
      1. pay many dollars for your software

      That's how they rape consumers who don't understand the deal - you aren't really 'buying' the software, like you buy a box of soap - only a 'license' to use it in certain ways, like renting a car. The software is still the property of the Msft Corp. It's like XYZ Oil Company also leases cars, and part of the contract is that you will only use XYZ brand gasoline in it, and they can test for 'foreign' gas and charge you a fine if you put ABC gas in (even tho it works ju

      • Re:Life EULA (Score:5, Insightful)

        by arkanes (521690) <arkanes@nOSPAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday April 22 2003, @09:02AM (#5780584) Homepage
        Except, of course, that whole license crap is a load of horseshit. It's looks like a sale, it's treated as a sale, it's LISTED as a fucking sale in FCC documents, it's a sale. It's not a licenseing. There's no license. There's no signatures (EULA dialogs don't meet federal standards for electronic signatures by a long shot). There's no contract (there has to be consideration in contracts, and there's none in an EULA). If they want to license software, they need to do it right - and that means that every single person who buys software from you needs to be offered an agreement, agree to it, SIGN it (copies for both of you), and THEN, and only then, gets the software.

        The commercial software industry is fucked up. It wants excemptions from responsibility that would be the envy of any other industry, while at the same time making it's own laws about the allowed use of it's products - with no chance for competition, because you're (supposedly) bound by the agreement AFTER you've paid! It's a travesty. At some point, there WILL be a shakedown and this sort of nonsense will either go away or be codified in real law - at which point we'll all be felons, and the bottom will drop out of the personal computer industry - because at that point we're essentially allowing anyone who sells software to write law, and you WILL start seeing things like EULAs that require you to give up your children.

        Don't think that all the lawyers at MS don't know this, either. It's why they consistently shy away from cases involving EULAs, either winning them on other points or settling out of court. They KNOW that if push comes to shove, the concept of the EULA as a legally binding document can't stand.

        Here's something to consider - there's not 1 single thing that makes it illegal for you to bypass an installer and just avoid an EULA entirely. Not even the DMCA - although you'd (probably) run afoul of it if you tried to distribute tools that did such a thing. Not that an installer is a copy protection device by any stretch of the imagination, but there you go.

        • There's no contract (there has to be consideration in contracts, and there's none in an EULA).

          I agree with the rest of your post, but the basis for the legality of EULAs is that you are creating a copy of the work when you install it (or copy it into memory), I think. In other words, you have to agree to the EULA, or you are infringing on their copyright - it's the same way the GPL works if you consider installing software to be copying it (I don't).

          So, that is the consideration right there - you

          • Re:Life EULA (Score:3, Insightful)

            by arkanes (521690)
            Oh, and the GPL makes it even MORE clear - it's not copying, it's distribution that's affected by the GPL. In fact, the gist of copyright law is also distribution, not just copying - I can make all the copies of a book I want, as long as I don't give them to anyone else.

        • and you WILL start seeing things like EULAs that require you to give up your children

          I've seen this at the top of an EULA (quote from memory so it's probably not completely accurate:

          It's important that you read this, especially the part about your firstborn child

          I think it was for the crossover plugin. I laughed so hard I almost splurted coffe all over my keyboard. And for once I actually read the complete EULA to see if there was any more fun in there, sadly it wasn't

  • Simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 22 2003, @08:14AM (#5780311)
    Make the software capable of emulating VFP, but leave it up to the user to violate the EULA. Doesn't the user "agree" to the EULA anyway? The people involved in making the emulator have nothing to do with the end user breaking the EULA.
  • ..by telling him he is an idiot, and he doesn't understand it.

    Or by calling your software X IS _NOT_ Y, and people still call it Y.

    Again, WINE is translating windows system calls to X11 equivalents.

  • What monopoly? (Score:3, Informative)

    by dsz (93759) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @08:15AM (#5780320) Homepage
    Hmm. If that's not a big hunk of evidence in an anti-trust case against Microsoft, I'm not sure what would be.


    But seriously - here's a perfect example of the software-side of Microsoft preventing other companies from competing with the OS-side. How is it possible that they're still pulling this crap after years and years?


    Bah! Is it even worth getting riled up anymore?

  • Not a dupe come on.. give taco credit (Score:5, Funny)

    by Monofilament (512421) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @08:16AM (#5780325) Homepage Journal
    I mean look.. the icon on the right is clearly shows that this current article is not about wine.. (i.e. there is no Wine Icon).. and is really about the quip about MS using EULA violations to stem emulators of windows. The CD icon must mean comedy or something.. i'm not too sure.. not about WINE though.. definately not.

    Ok maybe its just taco feeling his article post rate was lowering and need to throw something in.

  • Wowza (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Obiwan Kenobi (32807) <`moc.egnaroretsim' `ta' `nave'> on Tuesday April 22 2003, @08:25AM (#5780372) Homepage
    Is it me, or have more dupes been posted in the past 3 months than in the past 4 years? I'm not trolling, I'm just generally curious if the editors actually read their publication (if it can be considered a "publication" or site or whatever).

    This story [slashdot.org] was big news, at least, I thought so. I thought it was insightful and telling (especially of MS monopolistic practices), and that it got a lot of (deserved) attention, even more so that it's been on /. But now, another dupe, and CmdrTaco is so oblivious to this it's really just sad.

    It's okay if you don't agree. I can take the -1 Offtopic and -1 Troll if you wish. I can hear the karma sizzling...
    • Anecdotally, I think you're probably correct.

      I suggested some time ago that the editors do something useful, like change the departmental listings to something informative, and that was ignored (not that I expected them to give a shit, really, but... you don't want to troll before at least contributing something useful).

      The editors continue to hope that subscriptions will go up to make some money for OSDN - the problem is, if they can't be bothered to check the site for simple errors like these, how do th
    • But now, another dupe, and CmdrTaco is so oblivious to this it's really just sad.

      You want to know what's sad? Really really sad? The amount of mindshare devoted to trashing slashdot for posting duplicate stories.

      This is your favorite technical web site. Admit it. It is. Mine too. Forgive the occasional dupe, k?

      Your comment itself is a duplicate - it's been posted at least 10 times for every duplicate the editors post. That's what's sad.

  • violations? I'm violated (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 91degrees (207121) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @08:27AM (#5780382) Journal
    was contacted by an Microsoft manager and told it was a violation of the VFP EULA to run it on Linux

    Isn't poroduct tieing a violation of anti-trust laws? Not that that's ever stopped Microsoft, of course.
  • ...I really must WINE about how this post emulates yesterday's [slashdot.org] post.

  • Hmmmm (Score:3, Troll)

    by TheGreenLantern (537864) <thegreenlntrn@yahoo.com> on Tuesday April 22 2003, @08:43AM (#5780458) Homepage Journal
    Maybe if we repeat this horrible, horrible news about Microsoft being mean and nasty, someone will actually give a rats ass about Visual FoxPro?

    .........

    Nope, guess not.

  • Connectix? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Didn't Microsoft purchase Connectix [connectix.com] a windows emulat^H^H^H^H^H^H Virtualised Environment. Hmm something seems strange if you ask me
  • The others:
    1. MS will continually introduce gratuitous and non-documented changes to the APIs to keep it from being fully functional

    2. Even if it worked perfectly, it just lets you continue to give money for applications to MS and to keep your data in closed formats dictated by Microsoft.
    For these reasons, WINE is ultimately losing proposition IMHO. It's not the way to go Open Source. The criticial apps (browser, office suite) now exist in mature forms in open source.

  • Codeweavers got Access working too... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Yoda2 (522522) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @09:00AM (#5780571)
    link [greatmindsworking.com]

  • Subscription? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nochops (522181)
    update Oh well, its a dupe. Whatever, it gives people something to complain about I guess ;)

    Oh yeah...and please, pretty please with a cherry on top....please subscribe to Slashdot. We need your money in order to bring you these wonderful posts again, and again, and again....

  • if only we could apply those lessons learned to /. , perhaps we wouldn't spend so much time reading the results of /. emulating /. of the past week.

  • Oh well, it's a dupe. (Score:3, Funny)

    by danielpavel (243201) <daniel.pavel@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 22 2003, @09:37AM (#5780919)

    Whatever, it gives people something to complain about I guess ;)

    Yeah, like complaining about it being a dupe...
    Oh, wait, was my post self-redundant?

    -Daniel.

  • Visual Fox Pro??? Please!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by ayjay29 (144994) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @10:18AM (#5781238)
    It MUST be a double bluff. MS want to create a stink about it so MORE people will run Visual Fox Pro on Lenux, thus delaying the development of several OSS projects.

    True Story:
    I was at a MS seminar, and a MS employee was presenting a demo on .net and data access. One guy asked a question starting:

    "I'm a developer with Visual Fox Pro..."

    The MS guy just replied:

    "I'm sorry."

    • > -- All sentences beginning with "All" are wrong. Even this one, because it's correct. Paradox?

      No, it's not a true paradox, just a false statement. All sentences beginning with "All" are wrong, makes the current sentence false. Thus: Not All sentences beginning with "All" are wrong. Which is true. If it were a paradox the false version of the statement would make the statement true, which would then make it false, etc.

      However the point can be made that if you negate the "wrong" instead of the "all" th

      • Re:EULA (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Carrot007 (37198) <Carrot007&thewibblereport,co,uk> on Tuesday April 22 2003, @09:02AM (#5780582) Homepage
        > It's the reason why I just use VNC to get to my Windows machine

        Isn't that also something microsoft has been moaning about, in that when vnc'ing to a windows os tht you need 2 windows licences, 1 for the "windows" machine and 1 for the machine that vnc is running on (ie for you linux box!) Dunno what happened there, i'm sure it was introduced (licence change) in xp and a win 2000 service pack.

        Ho hum, licenses suck! In fact pretty much everything that tells you you can't do sucks, but that doesn;t mean letting you do what you want would work either, unfortunatly people want to make money, and restricting others is a good way to do that,

        hmmmm:

        Patent application:

        For a method of creating revenue by restricting the rights of others.

        MONEY!!!! ;-)

      • Re:EULA (Score:5, Insightful)

        by arkanes (521690) <arkanes@nOSPAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday April 22 2003, @09:16AM (#5780707) Homepage
        Sigh. Time for some more slapping. One: The GPL is not an EULA. One more time: THE GPL IS NOT AN EULA.

        It works under a different premise of law and performs a totally different purpose. It's been explained dozens of times and if you aren't clear on it now then you're either willfully ignorant or shouldn't be talking about things you haven't read.

        MS does not support products under WINE. They never have. They likely never will. That's a given, and there's a huge difference between "not supporting a product" and "suing people who do unsupported things with your product". There seem to be alot of people here who can't understand that, either. If you aren't comfortable running important things under WINE, that's fine. Nobody will make you, especially not Microsoft. Although they've claimed that there aren't any undocumented APIs in Windows that're used for applications.

        Here's another suprise - it IS perfectly okay to reverse engineer Windows. This is why MS hasn't sued Codeweavers or the WINE project. There's specific things you have to do to make sure you don't cross any legal lines, but as long as you do that you're fine. MS doesn't have to admit it - they don't have any say in the matter. WINE is a reverse engineering of the Win32 API from publically available documentation. Nothing wrong with that.

        Next question: What makes you think that EULA's are "perfectly valid"? Just because they say they are?

        • Re:EULA (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Ded Bob (67043)
          Sigh. Time for some more slapping. One: The GPL is not an EULA. One more time: THE GPL IS NOT AN EULA.

          They are different licenses (i.e., EULA, BSDL, GPL, LGPL), but they all use copyright law to enforce them. They are the same in that respect.

      • Re:EULA (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ReconRich (64368)
        Microsoft has every right to declare violations in EULA's. If they don't comply at some point with state law, than of course they are invalid and you can more than likely ignore that portion of the EULA.
        I hate to say it but people that complain about an EULA, should also complain about GPL, and other source code licenses. It's frustrating to hear hypocrisy and judgement based on the fact that Microsoft is for-profit and not hear the same for similar agreements in the open source world.

        OK, I'll bite.

      • You can not hate a business for being a business. It's like hating a wall for being a wall.

        There was every reason to hate the Berlin Wall (among others) for the oppression it represented. Of course, after the Berlin Wall came down, many Germans were saying "build it back, three meters higher", just as old-time internet users felt overrun when the internet became generally available. In a similar vein, Microsoft as a monopolistic business is the result of very oppressive practices that persist because

      • Re:EULA (Score:2, Insightful)

        by msborg (615216)
        First off, WINE is not illegal. It simply accepts the documented Win32 API calls, and responds appropriately. Nothing illegal about that at all.
        Second, one of the fundamental aspects of EULA law is that if it is binding at all, it is only binding on the parties involved: the seller (Microsoft) and the buyer (the developer). If the developer creates an executable application for a client, and the client installs it to run under WINE, there is no violation of the EULA. Microsoft cannot go after the devel

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.