Wine and industrial communication like OPC
michael at cherryblossom.homelinux.com
michael at cherryblossom.homelinux.com
Tue Sep 7 19:14:42 CDT 2004
On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 10:14:50AM +0100, Mike Hearn wrote:
> >Yyyy!
> >I hate license issues!
> >I can see that for many people this wouldn't be an issue, because they
> >probably have some old Win 98 CD/Licens somewhere (if they even care).
> >But for a company that would like to send it as part of an embedded
> >computer with Linux I can se a lot of problems.
>
> OK. I don't really know the details of licensing in embedded scenarios
> but I can see it would cause problems.
Ditto.
> >But that was per development project, not per system we want to use OPC in.
>
> Ah, I see. Surely if you depend on Windows though you *already* have to
Are they already using it? Maybe they're just looking at options right now.
> pay for Windows on a per-system basis? No? Or do you get bulk deals ...
Well, even here, buying a site licence (even for 98 or ME or something)
should cost much less than $3000-4000 for the native solution, (right?)
and you could always say have Windows on the embedded device and
disabled (or included on a useless CD packaged with the device) and then
use the single dll or group of dlls to do RPC in wine on Linux on the
device, right? I mean, Microsoft would still be paid for their work on
the dlls, so shouldn't that be okay?
> >That is good ;-)
> >In the industry we are a lot of people who really question the total
> >madness of letting the OPC standard be that depended on Windows, when it
> >is supposed to be a "free" organization.
And no one has come up with a low cost or open source Linux version yet?
How unusual. You could always ask people in the industry to help in
funding, development, setup, improvement and/or testing of such a system
(low cost or open source).
> >My hope if I can get this to work is to publish a site on the net so all
> >who want to use Linux in the industrial computing can do that quite easy...
> >But then we have the license issues to :-(
What about HOWTOs or guides and info on the experience? That would be a
start...
> Yes. Unfortunately there are (as far as I know) only 4 DCOM
> implementations in the world:
>
> 1) the one in Microsoft Windows
> 2) DCOM for UNIX, which is based on Microsofts code
> 3) Wines
> 4) Cedegas (this is similar to Wines but more advanced, at least for
> InstallShield support)
>
> The only one that is under a liberal license is Wines which is
> incomplete. The only way to solve this problem is by having a
> free-as-in-speech implementation of DCOM, which means extending and
> improving Wine.
> >Ok, now I understand, and also why I got confused before.
> >
> >And there is a lot of work needed to make DCom to work in Wine?
> >Is someone working on it or is it something that not is that important in
> >other cases?
>
> Yes, it's a fair amount of work. Currently nobody is working on it as
> their primary project - Rob Shearman and I did some work on it for
> iTunes/InstallShield support lately and most of our code is motivated by
> InstallShield.
>
> It is something that we want to do though, because we currently depend
> on native DCOM for a lot of stuff, like installers/office embedding/etc
> etc ... so there's interest there at least from CodeWeavers side. But
> we're certainly not committed to anything.
>
> One possible plan is this: if it is true that there is general,
> widespread concern over OPC depending on Windows in the industry,
> perhaps you could get together with other companies and form a
> consortium to fund the development of an LGPLd DCOM implementation in
> Wine. This would allow you to write DCOM based software anywhere that
> Wine runs and be independent of Microsoft and licensing costs.
I think this sound intreaging and a good concept. Even if you start
small, (i.e 2-5 companies) the concept could grow bigger over time.
> I think if funding was available in the right amounts Jeremy could be
> persuaded to have CW at least put some hours into it and I know at least
> one guy from ReactOS wants to work on it too. But I can't say for sure.
Would in this case, you want to say that the funding would have the
clause that code provided would have to be LGPLed, included in
WineHQ/Wine, and would be owned by the writer(s)? :D
> Anyway, it was just a thought.
>
> thanks -mike
>
Just a few comments.
--Michael Chang
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