On Sunday 24 September 2006 00:36, Rolf Kalbermatter wrote: > Robert Lunnon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > On community, the wine project doesn't represent a community in the sense > > that Wine has an altruistic purpose to provide value to that community - > > It doesn't do that because the wine developer base doesn't measure > > important to Wine users and set policy to provide that value. This means > > Wine isn't a particularly good Product. Wine is a developers play-thing, > > Crossover is a Product ! > > Considering that CrossOver does pay the bill for some part and the major > driving force behind Wine is and has been for a long time Codeweavers, no > matter if you like it or not, I feel that a Wine with a much more loose > acceptance policy but without the Codeweavers support it has now would be > not half as far as it is. It would contain all sorts of hacks and > workarounds for specific applications but be basically an unmaintainable > beast and much further from providing a proper basic infrastructure with > COM/DCOM and MSI support (to name some examples) as it should be done > rather than as it might just barely work for some popular applications. > > A project driven mostly by users most likely is focusing on providing fast > fixes that make a specific application work, while Alexandre is > specifically trying to make sure that there is a clean (both technically > and legally) infrastructure on which one can build for years to come. And > which by coincidence will deliver a very good platform to build CrossOver > from. It does mean that you can't expect it to immediately deliver support > for all the apps you and many others might like but on the other hand it > will mean that once new MS technologies get used more widespread it is much > easier if not only possible then, to add them and provide faster support > for newer apps. > > For some part it does boil down to "I want to have fun now" vs "I want to > have a technically sound infrastructure that can stand some time". In that > sense Wine as is is maybe not a product in the sense of our fast and > trigger happy marketing world but it is certainly a product in the sense of > engineering and even more so than CrossOver. But then you pay something for > CrossOver and not for Wine so maybe that is also why Wine can't and > shouldn't really be a product in the sense of marketing. > > And as with all OpenSource projects, those that provide the most support in > terms of code submissions, testing and documentation get to say the most > and I think it has been clear that most of them are quite content if not > happy with the modus operandi. Of course Alexandre can be a pain sometimes > but he has been always with a reason as far as I can tell. > > Rolf Kalbermatter
You make the implicit assumption that you can't have both functionality and technical soundness. I did not suggest a free-for-all, I suggested that a managed objective be established and that "Hacks" that are necessary for functionality and are sufficiently limited in scope can be acceptable if they meet a need of the community. Secondly, I am starting to get rather annoyed that I am being portrayed as anti Alexandre. This is not the case, Alexandre does a pretty good job given the governance model, but the model itself has severe deficiencies and is not community focused. Bob
