:LinuxPlanet: Editor's Note: Turning the Town Red with WINE
LinuxPlanet: Editor's Note: Turning the Town Red with WINE Oct 9, 2000, 18 :25 UTC (12 Talkback[s]) (6040 reads) (Other stories by Kevin Reichard)
"WineLib is the programming toolkit that lets developers compile their Windows applications for use on Linux. Instead of relying on Wine
to run native Windows applications, WineLib allows developers to release a Linux version of their software without having to massively
convert source code. As Wine 1.0 is still months away from release, the Wine developers have quietly turned their attention to WineLib."
"'Basically, Corel forked their version of Wine, to the extent where it would take months to merge their tree with the primary Wine tree,'
White says. The problem, White says, is that while the Wine developers have been incorporating Corel code and solutions into the main
Wine tree, Corel has not been incorporating newer Wine code into their fork. So while Corel's plans for Wine are uncertain, given the
huge investment Microsoft had made in Corel and Microsoft's traditional antipathy toward anyone reverse-engineering Windows APIs,
the Wine project enters a state of uncertainly. Which, White says, is good news."
"'The truth is, the uncertainty helps us out enormously," he says. "For companies that don't know what Microsoft will do, the better off
we are. We can serve as the main resource for the people who want to hedge their bets and come out with a Linux version of their
software.' Under this scenario, commercial vendors and VARs will need a source of expertise to come out with Linux versions of their
software, which creates a market opportunity for WineLib and CodeWeavers -- and for Linux, both on the desktop and on the server."
