[Wine] Arguments for Wine on windows/incremental adoption

Deweirdifier wineforum-user at winehq.org
Thu Dec 10 14:24:32 CST 2009


In short:

wine to be ported on windows, and programs to be allowed to compile partly on native windows DLLs and partly on wine DLLs. In theory, this should permit much faster market penetration.

More elaborate explanation:

Theres some megre effort for porting wine on windows, but this is mostly for testing purposes. I'm proposing to port wine seriously on windows, and this at the highest priority. In a way so that program developers can compile against a fraction of wine DLLs, The proposal is inspired from evolution (biology), teeth evolved incrementally from scales, so wine too should attempt a incremental approach. Braking up development in tiny working increments its extremely powerful strategy, this is how we got here.

advantages:

*it requires much less effort to try to port an application from 100% m$ to 99%m$ + 1% wine then to 100% wine. If program developers are particularly lazy, they can simply test if there program works with some wine DLL with no further fidling. Only future development will take in to account that DLLs were replaced. This work would require much lower skills, then a full fledge port, and even with out the source code, just take a random dude from the street, show him how to relink a DLL, and simply test if the program performs. This could even be partially automated.

*If Photoshop or skype, compiles even to just 1 wine DLL, it will make a lot of publicity for wine. It seams to me that its acceptable to spend the resources for just 1 wine DLL, instead of 100% .

*Potential to incrementally switch to 100% wine.

*Switching to even 1 wine DLL, means, that wine developers aren't alone anymore running after bugs, the program developer will actively make sure its product works with this particular DLL. Mechanically compatibility goes up, for free.

*At the beginning companies may choose to do some DLLs for 1. symbolically, 2. for marketing, 3. anti m$-resentment 4. beater negotiation position against m$ 5. smoke m$ competition. I think its very reasonable to assume, google will do this with all there software, so you'll need wine to run google earth on windows for example. In every single sector where m$ tries to compete, there competitors will be glad to rub there face in the dirt :) .

*Other open source projects should link by default to wine DLLs. For example, if we arrange that firefox/Chrome links to wine DLLs, we get immediately 30%  [Shocked]  of all PCs with wine on it. Programmers, can assume that wine exist everywhere, like flash, and start writing code natively for wine. This would mean, that they will be programs runing on wine, but not on windows, if this happens with a huge thing like photoshop, its m$ that will change ITS code to accommodate wine programs.

*If people have built in resentment against m$, they will have a chance to proportionally vent it.

*Potential market becomes immediately 100% of PCs, not ~1%. More users, more donations.

*Server software should lends its self more readily for this kind of manipulation.

*Even if you think it bull shit, or if it doesn't work. It's so "dominate the world" idea, that it should get spammed effortlessly in the entire blogosphere.

*Benefits transferable to ALL other OSs under the sky.

*Enhanced security, because of fractionairy open source code.

*M$ just published windows 7, market penetration still very low. They are at a vulnerable position now, it is possible that a lot of people will prefer switch to wine platform, instead of windows 7. Wine will act as windows 7 bis. Also, the EU is at there asses, other source for pressure and vulnerability. Yet an other fine? Or impose something creative with wine for windows?

*Could help people switching to alternate OSs.

*Ultimate objective, is to completely remove m$ property from windows, 1 file at a time, in such a way that all other developers and users can follow the shift. Is this possible at the kernel level? React OS could be recruted here, again similar benefits for that project too. A project could be started that automatically rips out all the bling bling of m$ that was sucesfully migrated to, and installs the alternatives.

*Wine developers should consider much more how the others will react to this possibility, far more then its technical merits. It's a gamble that worth taking, losses are low, and potential benefits very big.

please comment, even if its just to say that you agree. We have to do what to propose this to wine developers? Can we do some sort of little petition among users with this "feature" wish? Some one wants to make other proposals/suggestions?







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