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It would be cool if the Wine project could use it for reference. Currently they are working by reverse engineering, AFAIK. I wonder if they are "qualified".
by m_for_monkey 14y ago
It would be cool if the Wine project could use it for reference. Currently they are working by reverse engineering, AFAIK. I wonder if they are "qualified".
- parktheredcar 14y agoProbably not. Microsoft is 'sharing' their source code with select partners because it's in their best interest to be accommodating to organizations that are building complex systems on top of their product. Wine is closer to a competitor than a partner.
- mindstab 14y agoI think in cases like what Wine is trying to do (reimplement/reverse engineer) you want "clean" engineers, not "tainted" ones. So I think that having their devs look at the windows source code might be the last thing they want. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
- gaius 14y agoAlso see http://oldcomputers.net/compaqi.html http://oldcomputers.net/compaqi.html Compaq couldn't just copy IBM's BIOS to make their new machine guaranteed IBM compatible, this would be illegal, and easily proven by IBM. Solution: Reverse-engineer IBM's BIOS. Compaq used two sets of programmers - one group analyzed the original code and made notes of exactly how it responded. The second group took these notes, and wrote their own BIOS that performed exactly the same.