What would most aid WINE development?

[wino at piments.com]

On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 21:54:39 +0100, Susheel Daswani  
<sdaswani at boalthall.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Jeremy,
> I am sorry if my remarks troubled you.  Perhaps my meaning didn't come
> across as intended?  I didn't mean to imply that WINE is not currently
> useful or has an impossible task.  I believe just the opposite - that
> WINE is useful and it can, one day, achieve 100% Windows
> compatibility.  Though I do believe that given the consent decree that
> was adopted, WINE's job was not made much easier.  I am simply trying
> to figure out what would be the best aid to the WINE effort.
>
> Thanks!
> Susheel
>
> On 11/19/05, Jeremy White <jwhite at winehq.org> 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.
>>
>> Well, it's lovely to know that we don't exist <grin>.
>>
>> To be honest, I'm a bit troubled by your remark.
>> I think Wine is a lot further along than you, and
>> most other people, seem to realize; further,
>> we're not just lazing around waiting for help.
>>
>> .....
>
>
>
I think that attaining 100% compatability is almost by definition  
unachievable. However reaching a _useful_ and usable degree of  
compatability is not far off.

I wrote a fairly complex windows app. a several years ago using delphi 2  
and even 3 or 4 years ago it worked almost completely on wine at that time.

I tested again last year and the only thing that did not work was some  
fancy  degraded frame borders that were developed more by trial and error  
than by documented features.

It seems to me that the major challenge to wine now is move from a  
constant train of development/regression to a more stable improvement  
without breakage.

That seems to be well understood by the developers.

That task could have been made a lot more attainable had the courts/JD  
been more effective in handling the anti-trust case.

Wine is a very valuable stop-gap resource for people/businesses wishing to  
bridge the gap to a more reliable OS but finding the path barred by the  
need to deal with M$-only formatted correspondance.

The number of disgruntled users has already reached critical mass.

The only real barrier that remains is for sufficient number of businesses  
and administrations to adopt a strategy where it is no longer acceptable  
to publish and transmit documents in a format that forces the recipient to  
have the lastest version of M$ office to read and modify a document.

If the judicial system wishes to intervene it should be at this level ,  
not trying coerse M$ to play fair with rules and judgements that they will  
already have worked around before they are decreed.


There is already an increasing body of local and national authorities in  
US,Europe and elsewhere that realise being totally dependant on a single,  
closed-source OS is unhealthy and inappropriate to their function.

Maybe Wine could pull in some funding if it could demonstrate a feasable  
interim solution.