Robert Millan wrote:
This paragraph is most significant:
"[...] The two most important features of Wine 1.0 have to be that [..] it
does
not emulate Windows-64, its direct competitor!
If that second "feature" seems odd, heed the lesson of OS/2. That operating
system bundled a Windows emulator that worked sufficiently well for
independent
software vendors to ignore native OS/2 support. Vendors wrote for Windows,
trusting that the emulator would cover their OS/2 customers.[28] As a result,
OS/2 was starved of even the Macintosh's also-ran level of native application
support, and eventually withered on the vine. This is not the fate we want for
[GNU/]Linux."
I don't know. This is the exact same argument that people used against
creating and supporting Wine in the first place. If people had listened
to it, we wouldn't have had Wine at all. I wouldn't have needed to build
Wine packages for Debian.
Truth is, Linux has shown that you can succeed in a hostile and
competitive computing world by *not* relying on world-domination
tactics, but rather just work to make the system the best it can be, out
of love for the system, rather than corporate demands for profitability.
That is why Linux is still alive today, despite all the FUD and other
attacks thrown at it: because money and market share didn't matter,
nobody could pull the plug on Linux, and so it lived on, unlike OS/2.
Once you lose the vision of just making the best system you can just
because you can, you lose what makes it great, what sets it apart from
all the monopolists. That it's just a great system, free, unrestricted,
and without anyone telling you what you can and can't do with your own
computer. Is denying users 64-bit support for political reasons any
better than, say, DVD region coding, just because it's about *our* world
domination plan, not *theirs*?
Linux's time will come, but it should be on its own terms, when Linux is
ready for the world, and the world is ready for it. Which is hopefully
soon, but rushing in with manipulative tactics will do more harm than good.
OTOH, I suppose providing win64 for lenny+1 should be fine, since I don't expect
lenny+1 to be out before the deadline (end of 2008). After this deadline, if we
have lost the 64-bit battle (i.e. if Microsoft is still alive and we're still
starving), then we'll really need win64 for the upcoming long and tiresome war.
First of all, Microsoft isn't going to lie down and die anytime soon,
and second, it doesn't matter who wins the 64-bit battle. In the end,
Linux "wins" as long as it stays true to itself and its ideals.
P.S: Anyway, our users won't find any need for win64 untill win64-only
applications start to appear, and this is currently blocked by Microsoft
inability to provide usable 64-bit systems. So we can easily live without
that..
Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn't underestimate MS. But in any case, it's not
a call I'd like to make.
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