winhelp, Vector NTI, molecular biologists

Alexander Nicolaysen Sørnes alex at thehandofagony.com
Tue Sep 4 09:41:04 CDT 2007


Tirsdag 04 september 2007 03:17, skrev Misha Koshelev:
> On 9/3/07, Stefan Dosinger wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Actually you all bring up rather interesting points with regards to Vector
> NTI as:
>
> (a) It pretty much ships with almost every Microsoft redistributable needed
> (e.g., MDAC, Windows Script, MFC71, etc.) and installs them on its
> installation _except_ MFC42 (not sure why this oversight and if this would
> break it on some native system, although I _believe_ it installed correctly
> on my plain vanilla Win98 VMWare installation, but I would have to double
> check for sure).
>

I believe mfc42 is bundled with Windows XP.

> (b) If the licenses for those DLLs/redistributables are the same as you
> suggest for DirectX, this would mean they couldn't ever say they support
> Wine (but I'm not sure whether or not the licenses are). Anyway, seeing it
> work "gold" on Wine still wouldn't be a bad thing in either case and
> certainly Vector NTI is not the only program that needs good winhelp
> support.
>
> Misha



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