What would most aid WINE development?

[Jeremy White]

> In terms of what a court could order, I think remedying the
> documentation and scope problems wouldn't be overly difficult.  A

Susheel,

Actually, I think the current consent decree made some attempt
to provide for clear documentation.

What failed, in my opinion, was a lack of oversight and
a lack of a clear process to request documentation changes.

That is, the documentation of the API has gotten substantially
better.  However, there is no way for anyone in the
'public' to request a clarification or visibility into this process.
The process is overseen by a committee and they are not responsible
to anyone but the judge.  So, the documentation gets better,
but it happens overnight, invisibly.  We have no way of
knowing that the documenation was improved, and no way of
knowing where further improvements are coming next, and no
way to ask for specific clarifications.

I think Dmitry was quite right in his point as well.
Given that the original lawsuit was over the illegal
use of Internet Explorer, I find it quite bitter indeed
that Microsoft is still able to claim IE as part of the
operating system.  That is, there are a wide range
of applications that will not function without Internet
Explorer.  Their failure is not because of a simple
API that can be replaced with Firefox, but because of
deep interwoven dependencies.  And running IE without
a Microsoft OS license is a grey area; completely hampering
the use of Wine.

So, to summarize, the punishment to Microsoft for illegally
pushing IE and destroying Netscape is...the continued
use of IE as an monopolistic lever.  Nice.

Cheers,

Jeremy