Commercial support

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Paul Millar wrote:
> On Monday 09 May 2005 16:11, you wrote:
> 
>>Paul van Schayck wrote:
>>
>>>Where would this list be?  As of now there is no list of applications
>>>we try to keep working with every released snapshot. [...]
>>
>>Go to the Wine HQ site and click on applications database.
> 
> 
> I think Paul wanted to know the subset of AppDB entries that "one might wish" 
> be checked as part of the tagging process.
> 
> I'd suggest that this metadata should be stored within AppDB, perhaps as the 
> user-rating, or as an external keyword: SNAPSHOT_TEST_APP for example.
> 
> [...]
> 
>>If you change anything in Wine something somewhere will probably quit
>>running. 
> 
> 
> We live in an imperfect world, so could well be true.  But such breakages 
> should (in an ideal world) be picked up and fixed.  Changes are trying to 
> implement new functionality, so if apps break as a result, then the patch is 
> broken in some sense.
> 
> The issue is about timescales, both with discovery and fixing the problems.  I 
> guess both will depend about how much developers care about the broken 
> applications or the way in which they're broken.
> 
> (this is where having application-level regression testing would be handy ;^)
> 
> [...]
> 
>>The more complex the application the more likely it needs setup.  As
>>versions progress setup procedures change and as a 
>>result things quit running.  Microsoft Office doesn't run without setup
>>and neither do many of the older games such as Alice or Rune.
> 
> 
> I think this is a transitional effect.  Once we get a 0.9 release, 
> configuration should become more stable.
> 
> 
> 
>>What somebody needs to do now is to get a relationship with IBM similar
>>to the one that Eclipse has.  IBM has a problem currently because there
>>is no native Lotus Notes client for Linux.  Wine could easily solve this
>>problem.  I talked to some of the marketing managers in IBM and most had
>>never heard of Wine.  The IBM development labs are currently starting to
>>develop this native client.  If IBM could use Wine it could save them
>>money and sueing Wine is one thing sueing IBM is another.
> 
> 
> Rumour has it (i.e. I can't put my finger on the source) that IBM do use Wine 
> internally.  Their marketing people may not know this, though.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Paul.
You say it better than I.  I agree.  I think Wine is headed correctly. 
Attention is being paid to a test suite and as the interface becomes 
more stable then the quirks of some of these programs can be ironed out. 
  That is exactly the way things should be working but let's not forget 
many if not most applications cannot now be run without some setup and 
the necessary setup may be undocumented.  At best the setup is different 
from a setup under Windows.
By the way, since Watson marketing has run IBM.  If marketing doesn't 
know about it it doesn't exist.  That is one of the keys to IBM success 
so it must be correct.