WineHQ should discourage the use of cracks

[Vincent Povirk]

On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 8:21 AM, Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:
>  Does Microsoft encourage people to use cracks?  No.
>  Wine shouldn't either.
>
Microsoft doesn't need to. Software developers have good reasons make
sure their copy protections will work on Windows (for most people
anyway).

>  The fact is, by telling people about cracks, and by
>  giving high ratings to apps that only work with cracks, WineHQ
>  encourages the use of cracks.
>
I would object to removing information about cracks (unless, perhaps,
the cracks aren't needed and would lead users to do tweaking that is
unnecessary and therefore risky and bad) from the appdb. The appdb is
always competing with other sources of app support. When it stops
providing the information that people want, and that information is
available elsewhere, people will go elsewhere. Do I have to explain
why that is bad for users and for the wine project?

>  The use of cracks is really independent of wine and/or windows,
>  and it's bad for the Wine project if people start associating
>  Wine with breaking the law, disrespecting copyright, and encouraging
>  people to seek out software from seedy, malware-ridden warez sites.
>  - Dan
>
I thought that was bad for copyright law and DRM (since the goal here
is not to use software without paying for it but just to run it on a
different platform, but that goal can't be met without breaking the
law and the DRM), but maybe I don't think about this the way most
people do?

-- 
Vincent Povirk