WineHQ should discourage the use of cracks

Vincent Povirk madewokherd+d41d at gmail.com
Tue Mar 4 09:31:40 CST 2008


On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 8:47 AM, Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:
>  Would you also object to removing high ratings from
>  apps that need cracks?    IMHO "Gold" ought not to
>  imply that one has to seek out a crack (and thereby
>  potentially infect your machine with malware).
>
Not in principle. The rating system doesn't really change the
information available on the site. For anything that's not Garbage or
Platinum, it's important anyway to look at the entry for more details.

I do agree that treating cracks differently from patches or overrides
would be inconsistent, as those are just as difficult to set up.

As others have pointed out, ratings actually express two different
things: the maximum possible functionality of an app and the
difficulty involved in getting that functionality. Right now, the only
rating that addresses difficulty is Platinum (an app that requires an
override or hack can be anywhere from Bronze to Gold). The ratings
currently look like this:

Garbage: No functionality, impossible to set up
Bronze: Somewhat functional, may require hacks
Silver: Mostly functional, may require hacks
Gold: Fully functional, requires hacks
Platinum: Fully functional, does not require hacks

Something like this might actually make more sense:

Garbage: No functionality, impossible to set up
Bronze: Somewhat functional, may require hacks
Silver: Mostly functional, requires hacks
Gold: Mostly functional, does not require hacks
Platinum: Fully functional, does not require hacks

This would give a fair amount of information about both the level of
functionality and the difficulty, and it would mean anything that
requires hacks cannot be rated Gold. It would also mean a program that
works only with a crack can be rated Silver, but I can't come up with
anything consistent that would force them to be rated Bronze.

-- 
Vincent Povirk



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