MSI (MS Installer)

[Greg Turner]

On Monday 09 December 2002 04:53 pm, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> To answer my own question - they require that the installer only be
> redistributed with an application, that the application add
> significant functionality to the redistibutables themselves, 

how nice of them ;)

> and that
> the application be only compatible with MS Windows. 

sheesh, typical.  I take it back.

> I guess we can't
> put it on our site, though I very much doubt they are allowed to
> request that last paragraph. Still, we can direct people to their
> site and tell them to D/L it from there, if there are any problems.

IMO, eventually wine should probably implement msiexec, but it might be 
pretty challenging, and, considering it's "just a free download" I 
guess it's a pretty low priority compared to things like uh, 
cabinet.dll (I heard somebody was supposed to be working on this but 
was screwing around with kde3.1rc5 instead :(.  "Potato Guy" is a real 
breakthrough of modern OOP programming techniques, you should all check 
it out!  Just think: only 18 hours of compiling, and you, too, can have 
a small worm crawl across on top of your foreground window.  I think 
this means Linux has finally caught up with Microsoft!).

Er... but I digress...

Those MSI's are really nasty.  IIRC, theyre like one big 
relational-database-style table in there, and, since they are cramming 
all the features of this particular "app" (the "Windows Installer 
Service," I guess) into a single table, you can guess how elegant and 
beautifully orthogonal the results are.  I haven't really messed with 
them but I get the impression it might be kinda hairy/undocumented 
territory.

Anyways, what was the point of my post?  Oh yeah: despite all of the 
above reasons not to implement MSIEXEC for wine, I think, in an ideal 
world, you wouldn't need to go to Microsoft and download things just to 
run installers in wine.  The more wine users depend on MS to make their 
wine work, the easier it is for MS to pull the plug, screw it up, etc. 
(which is not to say that MS has been taking such measures against 
wine... yet... but if past performance is any indicator of future 
returns, as soon as wine becomes a threat to the OS monopoly in their 
view of the world, this could instantly change).

Oh, and while I'm on a rant... if we wanted to be smart-asses and play 
dangerous lawyer games, we could redistribute msiexec with a native 
compile of winemine or some other small frob.

Ultimately, my guess is Microsoft simply wouldn't want wine-associated 
folks redistributing msiexec, whether their rules allow for this or 
not... so IMO nobody should do so unless they are willing to duke it 
out with an army of lawyers, go to the media, start a legal defense 
fund, endure nuisance lawsuits, etc., over the issue -- however remote 
that possibility may be, being prepared for the worst-case scenario is 
the only way to be ready for life's nasty surprises when they do 
come...  And there is also that aphorism about picking one's battles...

-- 
gmt

Disclaimer: I'm no a lawyer.  If you take legal advice from me 
seriously, you're an idiot, and you deserve whatever you get.  Blah 
Blah Blah Boilerplate Boilerplate Boilerplate.  Be safe out there!