Miscellaneous Support Page
From Wine-Wiki
Wine for ISV (Independant Software Vendors)
The big question is how ready is wine? Software vendors are already making use of wine and they say it is ready.
- http://kegel.com/wine/isv/
- http://kegel.com/wine/isv/#forum a google groups discussion forum
There are several options provided to allow a company to distribute software on Linux, each of which have a number of factors to weigh.
Wine enables software vendors to get their software working on Linux. Note is that Wine is the results of a community that has a goal of implementing Windows. This Community is an important consideration. There are over a million lines of code in Wine which others in the community have written for many various reasons. This is to your benefit, as no company can buy or take control or even hold you to ransom. As anyone can fix code, and no one is forced to, this means the developers appreciate those who show a willingness to work with the community. With programmers writing up detailed bug reports, submitting test cases, actively participating in the Developer Mailing List, by working in together with the community often very quick progress is seen as they seek solutions that will benefit all software that is used on Windows.
Because the source code for wine is readily available - any programmer who is willing can help develop wine. Some vendors use their own developers or contract with the many Wine developers. Working with the numerous contributers requires an awareness of there being many disparate interests. The leverage of Open Source, is where the combined interests of a wide ranging community of developers benefit each other.
Wine and ISV related Quotes
One ISV wrote [Dec 05]: my partner and I are developing Windows applications. Seeing Wine some months ago fascinated me a lot, so since then I'm spending one or two hours a day trying to bring our applications to work under Wine [...When] submitting a bug, or writing something into the wine-devel list, [...effort is required...](like looking into the Wine sources, close in the problem area, and asking really specific questions to the corresponding 5 or 10 lines of code in the Wine sources. [...]
D. Kegel: [Dec 09 2005] "If you're not ready to invest in a full native port of your Windows app to Linux, you should consider using Wine to do a quick port of your Windows application to Linux. to judge demand for a Linux version of your product." osdl link
J. White of Codeweavers: [Dec 09 2005] Try Wine, if it fails, *ask* how hard it would be to make it work, and then use that in any migration decision. [...] people spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on Windows Terminal Services when a fraction of that money could have gotten them a much nicer solution with Wine. WWN 302
An ISV posted [Jan 06]: We have 50 complex applications written in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 [...] We are seriously thinking of porting our applications to Linux under WINE. Is it possible to do so?
U. Bonnes: Porting to other X86 processors or really porting to other nixes, like power PC? In the first case, you can run windows libraries and you don't need the source for those application, in the latter case you need the source for every component in your tool chain.
[...] For this case, porting doesn't buy you too much, and running the application in wine (the "emulator") delivers the same (or even more) functionality to the user. [...] Install a recent wine, perhaps also install winetools and all the winetools recommended MS downloads. Install all the needed prerequisites for your application (which seem to be big...). Install your application and try to run it... Probably some things will go wrong, try to understand what's going on and if you are at you're wit's end, ask [in the mailing lists]. Also think about the needed licenses for all those downloads. If you want commercial support, there are some offers, e.g codeweavers.
D. Kegel: when porting applications to Linux [...] good bug reports may get a bug fixed for free. [...] A summer intern may be good for an early look. [www.kegel.com/wine/wine-2006-june-talk.pdf]
Bundling your Application with Wine
A developer wrote [May 08 wineusr] I've recently written some graphic application in windows. i've was successfull in running it under Linux using Wine. I had to add gdiplus.dll to the windows/system32 directory.
D. Kegel: Please file a bug for whatever you ran into in gdiplus that made you need the native DLL. Perhaps we can fix it.
Dev: now for my question. Is it legal for me to create a "Bundle" Wine with my application and make it work "native like" under linux - and then sell it?
D. Kegel: Yes. Google does this with Picasa (well, they don't sell it, but that doesn't matter).
Dev: Meaning that the end user will but a software that will install my application while it will run under the Wine platform? my question regards legal issues for Wine but mainly for Microsoft. since i'm using gdiplus.dll, arent i'm obligated to pay something to microsoft?
D. Kegel: A better path would be to bundle gdiplus.dll with your Windows app, and then tell people to run the app with Wine-1.0. You could provide a script that would download Wine 1.0 and install your app in it, say. [...] you have to obey the EULA. For instance, if you use the redistributable from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6A63AB9C-DF12-4D41-933C-BE590FEAA05A you can clearly bundle that gdiplus.dll with your windows app. I am not a lawyer, but: You clearly should not bundle Microsoft's gdiplus.dll with a Linux-only version of your app. It's fine to bundle it with the Windows version of your app, though, to let it run on versions of Windows that don't have that library.
A Wine developer noted that filing separate bugs accompanied with test cases for the dll would help Wine eventually fix the problems with gdiplus.
Developing an Application to run on Wine
A Developer wrote Nov 08: how can i best make sure that the programs i design on windows are able to run on wine?
D. Kegel: The main thing is to test on Wine as soon as possible, and file bugs so we can fix any problems you find. Test with Wine *way* before your program is finished, ideally right at the very beginning. In fact, you might consider actually developing on Wine by running your compiler and IDE on Wine, and testing occasionally on real Windows. Also avoid .net, especially .net 3 or higher.
Ed If you are stuck... .Net is a big job that is in progress.. and mono apparently can run on wine for some cases.
