/. wants a fork

King InuYasha ngompa13 at gmail.com
Mon May 25 17:48:02 CDT 2009


2009/5/25 Nicklas Börjesson <Nicklas.Borjesson at ws.se>

> > Not sure, but I see the second time around was a success for him.
>
> Let's not look to hard.
> He (or her) does have the right to having an opinion and going out of one's
> way finding out and posting here would only appear vindictive and fuel
> interest.
>
> //Nicklas
>
>
>
I don't post on here very often, I don't even hang out in #winehq(-social)
very often either, so my opinion may not be considered too important, but by
just looking at the efforts of the Wine Project to address the DIB engine
over the years, I feel disheartened by the lack of real progress. There have
been patches regarding the DIB engine that goes all the way back to 2002
with TransGaming!

But the implementations are always stonewalled and left to die over
arbitrary architectural reasons. I say arbitrary because I don't have a clue
what the spec is for this supposed architecture that the DIB engine is
supposed to follow. Eventually, Bug #421 may just be like one of those
10-year-old bugs that live in the GNOME and Mozilla bugzillas, that are just
left there because people don't care enough anymore to do anything about it.

While it is true that the DIB engine isn't the One True Solution regarding
compatibility with many Windows applications, it helps a lot with
graphics-intensive ones. At this rate, the DIB engine will be reassigned to
the 1.4.0 milestone because nobody will accept any implementation.

And nobody say, "Patches welcome!" or "Patches accepted!" because there is
proof to the contrary. The fact people say that is also a problem. A vast
majority of people are not technically inclined to the level of being able
to produce such things. Even people that subscribe to mailing lists like I
do, are not capable of contributing like that. And really, code IS NOT the
most valuable form of contribution for any project. If anything, it is of
the LEAST value. Documentation, advice, testing, support people, moderators,
infrastructure management, all these are MUCH more valuable than code or
money. Now, this problem is not limited to the Wine Project. This problem is
all over the open source world. It bugs me a lot when I get rebuffed because
I'm not a programmer. Granted, most people that ask are whiny and demanding,
and they get on people's nerves. But, people are generally happier with an
explanation in a cordial manner. Being mean or sarcastic about it, or even
asking for something they can't give is not a good way to go about it.

But, I digress. The Wine Project is making great strides, and with the work
the ReactOS Project is doing alongside them, the work is a lot more
momentous than just a compatibility API/ABI layer for UNIX and Unix-like
systems.
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