Re: WineX and the AFPL

"Deven T. Corzine" <[email protected]> writes:

> If the existence of DirectX competition kills interest in DirectX support 
> under Wine, could it be that there wasn't a real commitment to supporting 
> DirectX in the first place?

The problem is not the competition, the problem is Transgaming's
promise to release the code. If they made it clear from the start that
their code was going to remain proprietary, it would be much less of a
problem. It might still take users/testers away from Wine, but at
least not developers.

Of course the problem will solve itself once people realize that
Transgaming's promises are empty and that the code is not coming back,
and they will most likely start working on DirectX again. But we will
have lost a couple of years, and Microsoft is not standing still
during that time.

> I suspect the "loss" is inevitable and somewhat illusory.  The developers 
> who were only interested in gaming support, and who drop work like DirectX 
> support because Transgaming offers the same functionality (proprietary 
> though it may be), and who would go to the movies instead of picking up 
> some other work within Wine, aren't REALLY Wine developers per se.
> 
> Such developers may be brilliant programmers, but it doesn't sound like 
> they're involved to further the Wine project.  It sounds like they're only 
> interested in furthering their interests in GAMING, and were willing to 
> work on Wine only to the extent that it furthers that interest.  Wine as a 
> means to the end of playing more games.

You still don't understand how open source development work. Of course
people are working on Wine to make their apps work. Some care about
games, some care about Office, Juno, Eudora, etc.  If we were to
reject all these contributions because the developers are not "pure"
enough, or because they dare have other interests in life, Wine would
be absolutely nowhere.

The *only* reason Wine can do what it does today is because of all
these people who have done a bit of work here and there to make their
favorite app work better, and because they enjoyed doing that more
than going to the movies. Implying that these people are somehow not
"true" Wine developers is an insult to the whole community.

> Show me an example where ANY committed Wine developer has abandoned their 
> efforts simply because a proprietary option existed, and I might believe 
> your thesis here.  So far, you've only shown that developers who were not 
> committed to Wine (but who were very committed to gaming) lost interest 
> once Wine was no longer the easiest option.  It seems like that should have 
> been expected, not lamented.

Marcus explicitly said that Transgaming took away all the fun of
working on DirectX for him. Marcus is probably one of our most
committed developers, and after me he is the one who has been around
for the longest time. Sure he has been doing some other things, but
nowhere near the amount of stuff he was doing on DirectX. And note
that the other thing that Marcus has been working on, the COM support,
would be thrown away if Transgaming finally released theirs. Just a
nice way to decrease his motivation even more...

> Consider the possibility that there were committed gamers uncommitted to 
> Wine in the ranks of the Wine community.  Now ask yourself what would have 
> happened with these developers once they finished their work, even if there 
> were no Transgaming to distract them.  Would they have continued to devote 
> their efforts to Wine, or gone back to playing their games instead?

Of course they'd have stopped working once they achieved their goal,
or picked another goal. What's wrong with that?  When Wine does
everything I want it to, I will stop working on it too. Does that make
me an uncommitted developer?

> How certain are you now, that the damage you sense was real, not illusion?

As certain as before. And if you expect to convince me with your
arguments, you have a lot more research to do first on what is really
happening in the Wine community.

-- 
Alexandre Julliard
[email protected]