WineHQ should discourage the use of cracks

[Kai Blin]

On Tuesday 04 March 2008 13:15:10 Dan Kegel wrote:
> I've been fighting against the notion that the
> wine project encourages cracks for some time now.
> Cracked versions of apps are bad because they are
> a) illegal (at least in the US),

No argument on the US part. I'm still convinced that by EU laws, you're 
allowed to crack an app you bought in order to make it run on your software. 
As this hasn't been tested in court yet, though, I'll concede.

> b) disrespectful of the author of the app, and

Sometimes I wonder if a "look, we found a legal use for a crack" wouldn't be 
something that could move a publisher to help make his stuff work. Of course 
most publishers probably wouldn't agree to my reasoning in a), making b) a 
moot point.

> c) much more likely to be infected with malware.

No arguments here.

> One place we still do it is in our appdb ratings definitions;
> http://appdb.winehq.org//help/?sTopic=maintainer_ratings
> which say
> "Gold: Application works flawlessly with some DLL overrides or other
> settings, crack etc. "
>
> I propose that we change the appdb ratings definitions
> so that an app that only works with a crack gets no higher
> than bronze.

Fine with me. I agree with your reasoning of having to avoid being associated 
with malware and illegal activities. I think a better solution even for my 
point b) is to publicly support publishers who play nice. Did I mention I 
really like the fact that Blizzard finally decided to not force me to search 
for my star craft cd anymore? :)

Cheers,
Kai

-- 
Kai Blin
WorldForge developer  http://www.worldforge.org/
Wine developer        http://wiki.winehq.org/KaiBlin
Samba team member     http://www.samba.org/samba/team/
--
Will code for cotton.
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