winhelp, Vector NTI, molecular biologists

Stefan Dösinger stefandoesinger at gmx.at
Mon Sep 3 18:38:38 CDT 2007


Am Montag, 3. September 2007 13:30:57 schrieb Damjan Jovanovic:
> Somebody needs to make a do-nothing-useful app, intended for Windows,
> that also installs on wine and supplies each and every DLL that
> Windows applications need but we don't have in wine (like MFC42.DLL,
> the D3DX9_xx.DLL's, new MSVCRT's, etc.). That way we can legally use
> those DLLs without a Windows licence.
This is not necessarily true. I don't know about MFC42.dll or the msvcrts, but 
the directx eula does not allow that; It requires the application to run only 
on the Microsoft Windows operating system, targetting both Windows and 
Linux+Wine violates the contract. These are the conditions for distributing 
the directx dlls. I've not found anything against installing them on Wine, 
you just must not distribute the DLLs with an app that targets both Windows 
and Wine. Thus I think it's legal to write a script that downloads them from 
the original location @microsoft.com and installs them, as long as that 
script isn't bundled with the dlls. However, IANAL.

What remains unanswered though is how this affects game vendors whose games 
run on Wine without intention from the game vendor and ship the dlls, e.g. 
Eve Online.



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