Talk:Wine (software)/Archive 1

Length
the article is getting a bit long... can we split it up into sections? Enochlau 11:55, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I've cut it into sections and shuffled and expanded bits - David Gerard 14:16, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)

Move to Wine (software)
I think I preferred it at WINE. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 21:00, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good luck editing all sixty-or-so of the secondary links, BTW. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 21:02, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Okay, so since nobody seemed to be doing the link edits, I have submitted a proposal to Requested moves. See Jan 14 section. Please make your opinion clear there. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:03, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wine (software) &rarr; WINE
Like my request concerning Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny a few days ago, this is a request for a consensus to support the moving of a recently moved article back to its earlier location.

Recently somebody moved WINE to Wine (software) but he hasn't shown any sign of moving the three-score of internal links that currently point to WINE in order to avoid double redirects. If he had done this, or if he does this during the course of this request, I think that's acceptable. However if he doesn't I honestly don't feel like doing it myself because I think WINE was a perfectly good place for the article, since this project is a GNU-style acronym (Gnu is Not UNIX and WINE Is Not an Emulator). There is also an argument for the move to Wine (software) because the project is called Wine by the developers at WINE HQ. So if you want to vote against this move I think the best way to cast your vote is to promise to help me by fixing some of these links so they point to the article at its new location, if the decision should turn out against the move back to WINE. I'll be doing my share, too. I don't care, as long as I don't have to clean up after somebody's mess on my own when it may be that a revert to WINE would do just as well. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 22:50, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * WINE has been capitalized since the project's inception, and although the maintainers may no longer do so, the community at large certainly does. While I'm not a member of the common names camp, I'm going to support this initiative, as (i) many articles already link to this title, and (ii) parenthetical disambiguations should be avoided when possible.  ADH (t&m) 00:13, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose though this is a very close case. The shift from WINE to Wine in normal usage is happening, and I think now is about the right time to make the move here.  GNU-style acronyms are largely a form of vanity anyway, so I don't give a lot of credence to that argument.  I don't think there is a lot of clean-up needed. That's what redirects are for, and there's no need to immediately re-edit all those pages to avoid a single redirect. -- Netoholic @ 03:35, 2005 Jan 15 (UTC)
 * Support. Neutralitytalk 05:35, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose - I've been thinking for a while it should be called Wine (something). If it stays where it is, I'll pitch in with fixing the links - David Gerard 06:18, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, the project itself consistently calls it "Wine" lowercase - David Gerard 18:36, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Support.Cookiecaper
 * Oppose. Recursive acronyms are bogus; they do not actually stand for anything.  The acronym is created first, and the words of the supposed title are made up to fit it.  (Rather like the &lsquo;USA PATRIOT Act&rsquo;, which should also be changed.)  Note that the supposed acronym ‘WINE’ has two possible &ldquo;expansions&rdquo;.  The practice is a game, even in politics.  To take it seriously is ridiculous.  I feel strongly enough about this that I, too, will help with the double redirects. &mdash; Ford 12:54, 2005 Jan 15 (UTC)
 * Oppose The project calls itself "wine." Bruce 23:22, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose I'm not that bothered, but for one thing I always think that disambiguation by capitalisation only is dodgy (apart from the potential for human confusion, browser histories often don't distinguish the two, making "Back" behave rather oddly). For a second thing, if it's true that the project now calls itself "Wine", that's a practice to follow. And for a third thing I see exactly 2 redirects, both of which were fixed 2 hours before you expressed dislike for the move on the talk page. That there are links to the old name doesn't matter in the slightest - that's what redirects are for, after all. - IMSoP 00:35, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Unnecessary disambiguation link?
Why is there a disambiguation link up there pointing to wine? They're navigation aids... I doubt anybody would would go to Wine (software) looking for Wine :-) --Ihope127 01:45, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it's because WINE redirects here? Perhaps someone might type "WINE" when they want to go to wine. (Just speculating; actually I agree with you.) &mdash;Caesura(t) 14:44, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Legality issues
I think some subjects relating to legality/morality could be addressed in this article. I'm uncertain how relevant they are, but see below:


 * Referring to the sentence '...the Wine team has had to reverse engineer many function calls and file formats, in such areas as thunking...'(presumably referring to Windows code). Is not doing this a license infringement? About the only fact that could make it legal or at least de facto legal is the fact that the reverse-engineering was done only for non-documented code.


 * Was the decision to make the software a 'compatibility layer' rather than a full emulator made in order to circumvent legal issues?


 * In general, what are the moral and legal issues of making emulator-like programs? A link to a relavant article would be good if it exists. Even if it is only a compatibility layer, even a flawed one could deter computer many users from actually using Windows.

I suggest the above is incorporated into the body of text detailing Microsoft's response to WINE

--ChrisJMoor 01:43, 25 December 2005 (UTC)


 * A lot of Wine development is done through "reverse engineering" without an actual copy of Windows present - simply by looking at how programs expect certain things to behave, and how they actually do. That, obviously, doesn't infringe on any Microsoft EULA. Scott Ritchie 12:33, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Windows blocks updates when Wine is installed
I don't understand this section. What copy of Windows is being updated? - you wouldn't run Wine on a Windows machine, and when running it on Linux no copy of Windows is required (unlike Virtual PC, VMWare, etc). Where is the registry that's referred to? A rewrite of this section to explain the situation more clearly would be appreciated. PeteVerdon 21:29, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Did my last edit clear it up? Scott Ritchie 01:26, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Slightly, in that I now understand (I think) that it's referring to non-Windows MS software like Office, but it's still far from clear. I should point out that I'm not trying to complain here. PeteVerdon 13:14, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

anon: Link to info
 * http://winehq.org/site/?issue=262#Microsoft's%20Wine%20Check:%20Details

Modification of IE
The current version of the article states:


 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 beta checks at installation-time for 'Windows Genuine Advantage', and hence users cannot install it on GNU/Linux systems which use Wine without modification of the Internet Explorer setup files.

This is blatantly incorrect. There are many other ways to achieve this without modifying IE. For example, one could modify Wine to accept some command-line parameters that would "hide" these registry keys for a particular program, and then the IE setup program would simply not see the Wine keys.

I am modifying the article to say this. I don't have a source to cite, but I think this will be obvious enough to anyone reading the article. --Chris (talk) 09:27, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

IE Screenshot xgl?
why does the screenshot of internet explorer 6 running though wine also display xgl/compiz. xgl/compiz have absolutly nothing todo with this article and confuses the issue. does anyone have a screenshot that could replace this? gord 02:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. A more straightforward screenshot without the silly GL cube would show things much more clearly. Fragglet 09:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Recent "Wine will not accept ReactOS patches" edit
This appears to have stemmed from a handful of mailing list comments by Codeweavers staffers. At this stage it's pretty much just idle gossip, and unless some official statement is made regarding the direction of both projects then it should remain that way. Chris Cunningham 14:15, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Unsourced statements
I've added sources for the two statements that had previously been marked with, but I rephrased one of them to match the source more closely. -- Heath 128.173.105.144 19:06, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Chris Cunningham 19:21, 8 September 2006 (UTC)