What would most aid WINE development?

[Michael Jung]

Hi Susheel,

On Saturday 19 November 2005 20:16, Susheel Daswani wrote:
> My belief (which opposes the 'fact' stated above) is that if there was
> virtually complete documentation of what exists, and full disclosure
> of additions and modifications, a cloning could be achieved.  Of
> course it would take a huge capital and time investment, but the
> payoff would likely be worth it.

I've scaned the other mails on the list, but am not quite sure if this point 
was brought to attention already: I guess what would most aid Wine 
development from a legal perspective would be legal certainty for the 
project. Although the big companies (IBM, Novell, RedHat, ... where are you?) 
never officially state it, I guess the reason they provide only a limited 
amount of development resources (not to say: none) to the Wine project is for 
fear of Microsoft sueing them (or shutting down the Wine project with the 
legal hammer, which would still mean loosing their investment). The software 
patents problem makes this whole affair even more legally uncertain.

If it's impossible to clone the Windows API anyway, then it should be no 
problem for Microsoft to swear to never sue anyone who is crazy enough to try 
it ;) (I have to admit, that's probably a little naive).

I think it's kind of ironic that the finding of facts states that it's not 
possible for technical or economical reasons to clone the Windows API, a 
statment which in my opinion Wine clearly proves wrong, while not mentioning 
the legal barriers.

Bringing this argument to court could mean opening pandora's box, though.

Bye,
-- 
Michael Jung
mjung at iss.tu-darmstadt.de