9 ms·
I always assumed Microsoft did not condone Wine or other re-implementations of their APIs (like ReactOS), but that they were protected by DMCA reverse engineeri
by rgovostes 2y ago
I always assumed Microsoft did not condone Wine or other re-implementations of their APIs (like ReactOS), but that they were protected by DMCA reverse engineering provisions and anyway too insignificant to send the legal team after.
Wikipedia says,
> Until 2020, Microsoft had not made any public statements about Wine. ... On 16 February 2005, Ivan Leo Puoti discovered that Microsoft had started checking the Windows Registry for the Wine configuration key and would block the Windows Update for any component. As Puoti noted: "It's also the first time Microsoft acknowledges the existence of Wine."
> In January 2020, Microsoft cited Wine as a positive consequence of being able to reimplement APIs, in its amicus curiae brief for Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.
- jimrandomh 2y agoIf Windows Update replaced components of Wine, that would (a) break people's Wine installs, and (b) give those users a way to legally get Microsoft's versions of those components for use outside of Windows.
- rescbr 2y agoMicrosoft’s EULA would still apply to (b). It’s the exact same situation as downloading a Windows ISO from Microsoft’s website and running it with an activator.
- kelnos 2y agoI think Microsoft has finally realized that its animus toward projects like Wine and pre-acquisition Mono was ultimately unproductive, and a net negative for Microsoft itself. I still don't trust MS's motives in general, but I think they at least recognize that Wine/Proton helps make the Win32 and DirectX APIs a sort of de-facto cross-platform standard when it comes to things like desktop gaming, and that this is a good thing for them. On the server side, MS knows that Linux is by far the most popular server OS, and official support for running .NET backend apps on Linux from MS themselves is a win for them as well.
- kragen 2y agoanthropomorphizing complex social institutions such as corporations is ultimately unproductive and a net negative for clear thinking
- bonesss 2y agoI think it's just such a clear business-razor because of the cloud: can I take my app and spin up a bajillion cheapo servers with no licensing costs using that stack? If the answer for .Net was 'no' then there are meaningful domains where people would just jump ship in a second. Research, academia, teaching, and certain government areas pop to mind. Keeping Linux support, because of that server dominance, is a core concern for them.
- kej 2y agoPresumably being able to make money spinning up cheapo servers, via Azure, just reinforces that decision.
- deelowe 2y agoMicrosoft as a company is extremely myopic. Budgets are scrutinized down to the penny every few months at very senior levels. This drives a culture of immediacy. Wine was a threat until Microsoft realized everyone in tech had moved to service based business models (aka "cloud"). Only afterwards, did they "realize" Linux as a threat to their long term viability no longer mattered.
- kristopolous 2y agoThey finally started to admit where they're losers and stop trying to fight those battles. Dumping endless piles of cash into projects nobody cares about and pretending like you're the dominant player when you control some dwindling 2% of the market is stupid and more companies should learn that lesson
- deelowe 2y agoI think it's more because individual pc instances literally doesn't matter anymore. Operating systems and programming languages which lock you into them are irrelevant from a revenue standpoint.
- qingcharles 2y agoMicrosoft in 2024 feels like a different beast. All the MS devs I know seem fully on board with totally cross-platform support. Half of them are coding on MacBooks and I would hazard a guess that a good proportion of .NET web sites being built are being deployed onto Linux boxen.
- sublimefire 2y agoFew work on Macbooks, it is more about using WSL on the dev machines or even using DevBox instances.
- gnu8 2y agoI imagine very few of the MS devs are using BeOS.
- stackskipton 2y ago.Net SRE here, all our .Net REST APIs are deployed on Kubernetes. Devs are still mostly on Windows because Visual Studio. I've worked with Azure team, all greenfield they do for Azure goes on Linux as well. Windows Server is pretty much dead to Microsoft though it will be continue to be supported and released because $$$.
- smackeyacky 2y agoIt's been very hard to explain to my organisation that Windows Server is dead. We haven't deployed a system to it in two years, everything is some kind of dockerised linux thing but the "we're a Microsoft shop" idea prevails. In the end we decided to just let the management think what they want. I've been more of a Unix person for 40 years but I kind of miss the "good" versions of Microsoft Server - in the 1990s / early 2000s it was a real contender. If they hadn't doubled down on weird things like Powershell it might still be a contender.
- nequo 2y agoI’m a Unix person and I know nothing about Windows Server. How has PowerShell made it less competitive?
- alerighi 2y agoI mean, if wine is a problem they did basically the same thing with the WSL, especially version 1 (version 2 is just a VM, but the concept of running unmodified Linux binaries on Windows like they are native application is the same). I think that they don't care about going against the open soruce community, given that Microsoft uses a lot of open source software in their products (also, probably violates the terms of the GPL license of such software).
- ijidak 2y agoSo, would these provisions protect a reverse engineering of CUDA? It's hazy to me when reverse engineering of APIs is and isn't allowed.
- tambourine_man 2y agoYou are not alone. It’s not a well defined problem, hence lawsuits. API is also such a broad term, it’s hard to establish borders.
- hinkley 2y agoAWS Supports one of the tools for porting out of AWS. Supporting something that looks like an escape valve (whether it works or not) keeps the antitrust people off your neck.
- internetter 2y agoWhat tool is that?
- hinkley 2y agoI can’t remember, sorry. I met them at a tech meetup a couple years before I was using AWS and it didn’t stick in my brain. Except the funding source bit.
- varispeed 2y agoEven if Wine had become drop in replacement for modern Windows distribution, I doubt it would hurt much. Business would likely still buy Windows, because of support and security patches. Consumers would get their Windows preinstalled. Some manufacturers would probably do Wine installations - but then it would depend on support. Don't want to sell machines to people who are not tech savvy, that are not getting updates. That is a potential for returns and massive cost and headache.
- Brian_K_White 2y agoLife hack! Freeze your Windows from further unwanted updates by just fabricating some wine registry entries!