CrossOver Linux Vs. Wine

Open forum for end-user questions about Wine. Before asking questions, check out the Wiki as a first step.
Forum Rules
Locked
Franky Travian

CrossOver Linux Vs. Wine

Post by Franky Travian »

Sorry to bother, but I can’t understand a lot of your double standards ...

On the one hand develop a proprietary product "CrossOver Linux", but at the same time cooperating with the project "Wine" that's free.

Wine could be today better than CrossOver Linux, but who knows, perhaps you are sabotaging and delaying the Wine project.

I Don’t understand why you don’t develop software 100% free and paid, also you can charge for the tecnical support.

thanks for reading ;)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-us ... chment.htm>
Martin Gregorie

CrossOver Linux Vs. Wine

Post by Martin Gregorie »

On Wed, 2011-01-19 at 20:28 -0300, Franky Travian wrote:
Sorry to bother, but I can’t understand a lot of your double
standards ...

On the one hand develop a proprietary product "CrossOver Linux", but
at the same time cooperating with the project "Wine" that's free.
This is not an unusual approach for larger OSS projects. Take a look at
RedHat (Fedora - free, RHEL - paid support), PostgreSQL (PostgreSQL -
free, EnterpriseDB - paid extensions) and MySQL (free and paid-for
versions).

In all these cases there's a core of full-time developers who need to
eat, hence the paid-for version. The usual effect is that those who get
the 'free' software effectively pay for it by acting as beta testers
while those who pay for the software or for support get a more stable
version.

Unlike proprietary packages, this split gives you the choice of paying
or getting it free without stealing from the developers.


Martin
snejjj
Level 3
Level 3
Posts: 63
Joined: Sun Jul 25, 2010 5:25 am

Re: CrossOver Linux Vs. Wine

Post by snejjj »

don't forget that both projects benefit from this approach.
WINE benefits from (at least part of) the work those paid developers do without having to pay them and CrossOver benefits from all those little improvements the WINE community adds.
I don't think that in a pure retail approach, there would be so many volunteers helping in the project.
oiaohm
Level 8
Level 8
Posts: 1020
Joined: Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:54 am

Post by oiaohm »

Franky Travian
Wine could be today better than CrossOver Linux, but who knows, perhaps you are sabotaging and delaying the Wine project.
Number 1 Wine development branch more often runs new software before CrossOver does.

CrossOver has a GUI for installing Wine does not.

CrossOver is more a tested version fork of Mainline wine. Tested to work with a particular list of applications and freases there.

By the way CrossOver Linux other than the GUI that is closed source the complete wine source code used in it is down-loadable and you could choose to build it yourself. So any sabotage could be confirmed.

The graphical GUI of CrossOver is very old feature of CrossOver. Existed before CrossOver started funding wine in a large way.

The GUI is a form of technical support. Guided installation avoiding particular bugs. Without needing the huge labor.

Wine policy of not supporting most GUI's include CrossOver comes from lack of debugging information Wine can use. Wine does not stop others from developing GUI's to complete with CrossOver.

Yes wine maintainer even that employed by CrossOver. Has a fixed set of policies to follow that are decided by the developers of wine.

Its also interesting. OS X people are more likely to buy CrossOver than Linux people. CrossOver and Wine really does support two different markets.
James McKenzie

CrossOver Linux Vs. Wine

Post by James McKenzie »

On 1/19/11 4:28 PM, Franky Travian wrote:
Sorry to bother, but I can’t understand a lot of your double standards ...
There is no 'double standard'. Wine is a Free Open Source Software
(FOSS) project that has thousands of developers over time.
CrossoverLinux/CrossoverMac is a commercial product that follows the
LGPL code license for Wine source but has proprietary code that belongs
to them. A good example is the X11 for Mac code that they developed and
use that is not under the LGPL for either X11 or Wine.
On the one hand develop a proprietary product "CrossOver Linux", but at the same time cooperating with the project "Wine" that's free.
This is done all the time for FOSS projects. RedHat Linux is a
commercial product. Community Linux OS (CentOS) is not. The difference
is that CentOS does not have the proprietary packages created by RedHat.
Wine could be today better than CrossOver Linux, but who knows, perhaps you are sabotaging and delaying the Wine project.
No. Wine continuously improves. CrossOver freezes their code at a
specific level and makes improvements to their code to run programs like
Quicken 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010.
I Don’t understand why you don’t develop software 100% free and paid, also you can charge for the tecnical support.
Take a look at the RedHat model. The major difference is that RedHat
provides extensive technical support where CentOS does and can not.
Wine's major support people are users that have overcome problems and
share with others. That is the beauty of FOSS. There is someone out
there that wants their particular Windows program to run without error
and they create the fixes to make it so, without breaking other programs.
thanks for reading ;)
No problems. We do aim to explain the difference between the two projects.

James McKenzie
lahmbi5678
Level 7
Level 7
Posts: 823
Joined: Thu Aug 27, 2009 6:23 am

Post by lahmbi5678 »

Franky,

the Crossover Office software and wine (latest stable branch) are almost identical, see http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/change_log/ , the main developers of both projects are also the same people. The difference is that CXO contains a better GUI, install scripts and a lot of specific hacks for supported applications, whilst wine is following a "no dirty hacks"-policy. Which means, that a fix for a problem will only make it into wine, if it isn't (obviously) breaking other apps. The disadvantage is that a lot more work, tests and "infrastructure" is needed, but almost all improvements in CXO are integrated in wine, after some time, i a clean way.

You may consider this "no hacks"-policy as a subtle way to keep a business opportunity open, but it was already there before CXO, and it was established, because in the long run hacks need a lot more work and maintenance than doing it right(tm).
oiaohm
Level 8
Level 8
Posts: 1020
Joined: Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:54 am

Post by oiaohm »

Other thing you missed lahmbi is that Code weavers trys to obey the no hacks policy as well. Yes they will break it to meet customer demard but will pay coders to create proper solution that is merge able into wine.

Basically wine friendship is both directions. People like to forget about transgaming. Those truly did take wine extend and treat wine rules as something to be trampled over.

Yes there are some good companies out there that treat open source projects with respect and care. And impressiveness still make a profit. Code weavers will also help companies port programs to Linux.

Really Code Weavers relationship is very much like a Redhat relationship. Sometime I would love to see Code Weavers a with a more diffusivity.
Locked