Is wine/cedega legal? Is it right?
 

As the name suggests is wine/cedega/cxoffice legal? I am using Cedega and occasionaly wine, and I love them. But I was recently in a conversation with a coworker of mine who gave me his opinion on why he does not like emulators/manipulators (whatever you want to call them) . He told me it is basicly stealing someones work, even though it is reverse engineered. He asked me how would I feel if someone reversed engineered my work in order to run programs specificly designed to run on my OS, but without paying the fee of my sweat? I took time to think about it and I do not want to not give back to the person who created the software to make his/her money. And I came to the conclusion that I believe I'll buy a copy of windows xp, but still use the emlator to play the games that I have purchased, but knowing that I contributed back to the original developers of the OS, which is still in mass use, that I am emulating. I'm almost certain that I'll get someone that will say that the reason why wine cedega etc, are good is because windows is bad. Give something a little more intelligent then that, thank you in advance. Anyways, I guess now my question is, what is YOUR opinion on wine/cedega/etc, or emulation in general?

wine (and similar) does not steal anything. It emulates the API (the interface between program and system) of windoze , enabling programs that are specifically written for that platform to run on other platforms. microsoft does not earn (or lose) anything whatsoever (at least not directly) if it is possible to run programs written for the windows environment on other systems.

to use an example: is it bad or immoral with respect to a tv channel if you build your own tv from scratch? even if it is reverse engineered from someone else's design? with tv channel, I mean a general broadcast channel, not something distributed encoded via cable.

Little preface here, I have been on computers my whole life, and have among other things a BS in Computer Science. I had a few Computer Ethics classes, and looked heavily into going to Law school for Technology law, I did a lot of looking into legal and ethical isssues before I decided law school is what I wanted, at least at this point in my life. Anywho, I have a good deal of experience with copyrights, the ethics of computing and programming, and various licenses which software falls under.

Let's put it this way... how long would any product that made money stealing from Microsoft last before Microsoft was beating down on their door with a few thousand lawyers? Note that Cedega and CXOffice are pay for, and thus Microsoft would have been nailing their arses to the ground long ago had their been any chance it would work. Notice they have also a long track record of strong arming companies doing pretty much anything against their code of thought... and all are still around.

Assuming that doesn't help you, cause legally isn't what you meant, but morally, how about this. Let's say I code something. I can copyright both the code itself, and any new algorithm or other thing that makes it unique. Now let's say someone else finds another way to the same thing, a different way, but with identical results. Why would this person not have a right to use/sell their idea in the same way just because it ended up doing the same thing mine did? It isn't like he ever looked at my code, or used my algorithms, he may have even made it before mine and just released it later...

Or a little more loosely: Thoughts and ideas are far from unique. As much as we would like to think every problem has one unique solution, look at the simple step of sorting items in a list. I know 8 different algorithms commonly used for this, all of which work in nearly all programming languages. Assuming you want to sort a list, you could use any of them, or your own. Assuming I want to play a file type which was NOT MADE AND COPYRIGHTED by someone, could I not code my own little program to read that file in lieu of using thiers? How about a very generic file type, like a .doc which is essentially text and formatting in a file? You have an issue with that? I don't, nor does Microsoft. Moving that up a little higher, how about playing/opening a file type which is designed by a company and possible is owned by them(not that file types are copyrightable in themselves. Note that certain things like .gifs are exceptions to this because of the algorithms used in making them and viewing them. The file type itself though isn't.) Now, assuming I devised my own viewer for these files on my own with no help from the company owning them, and violated no laws(aka I didn't crack their code, or decompile it to see how they did it to base my own) and all I did was through trial and error from a logical start point until it worked in all cases... is that wrong?

Now that said, you can however use such things with copyrighted MATERIALS in themselves. For instance the mp3 question. The mp3 isn't illegal at all. The bits within it are of questionable legality unless you own it, or the original song. However, using your own decorder, or one you have paid for is perfectly legal regardless of how you got the file itself and the files legality.

In short... emulation is good, and legal, and there is nothing wrong with it in and of itself. However, that doesn't mean it can't be abused which is a fully seperate issue. You are under NO obligation to pay for an operating system to view files normally used in that operating system any more than you are required by law to own the nintendo to play nintendo games.(Legally you just need to own the games yourself, not the system for which they were created.)

Does that help your moral/legal quandry at all?

Edit: I notice this was much longer than I intended, but the story is, this is a massively complex issue in terms of legal and moral standing. But I think edgjerp did a good job in pointing out the tv analogy.... The viewer vesrsus the file. That is a strong point to consider, which is what exactly are you doing, and what part of it are you emulating. You aren't MAKING windows again, you are just making something to mimic certain aspects of its behaviour.

My opinion is that MS have billions of dollars and hundreds of lawyers and if it were illegal you'd be reading press releases about ongoing lawsuits trying to get rid of the emulators. Instead MS chooses to play games with the Open Document format and other MS directed "open" standards to try to prevent it.

Of course legality is a big term - you say MS sweat but the plethora of antimonopoly/anticompetitive cases filed against them by US and EU government not to mention other corporations leads me to believe that MS isn't as concerned about what is legal as you are.

The only reason most of what you want is on MS is because they essentially forced most vendors to bundle their software in the ramp up of PC days to the point it almost unthinkable NOT to have MS Office available despite the superiority of Lotus 123 over Excel and WordPerfect over Word and Paradox over Access at the time. Now that they've gotten the business desktop they're quite content to charge out the yin yang for the products they previously were willing to give away at little or no cost to take over the market. This is why monopolies are bad even when they seem good on the front end.

I think your coworker is drinking a bit too heavily from the BSA koolaid vat.......

The whole point of an OS is to provide enough functionality for other programs to run. In essence it frees application writers from having to write absolutely everything needed to interract with the hardware of a computer. The application authors certainly aren't hurt at all by running under Wine/Cedega vs. Windows and Microsoft has no authority to dictate what OS applications have to use.

another very important way to look at this is "economic throughput".
ideas are raw materials just like metal and wood for the costruction of products. Supose for instance soneone came along and claimed thay "invented" the idea of using wood to make furniture and therefore only they could use wood.
is an idea like a program recipe actually "sweat" and "hard work".
is an idea a "thing" at all someone can own.
can someone own the idea of making music and anyone using the same instrementation has "reverse engineered" their idea ?
somone in the ancient middle east "invented" the recipe for bread.
even domesticated the plant, figured out how to grow it.
developed a technique for capturing yeast,
then developed the method of making and cooking bread.
today were you go to make break all by yourself in your kitchen and you "stealing" the guys idea ? Do you owe someone money for the idea ?
can someone own the plant and you can't use it ? ironically in todays fascist worl the answer is "yes" someone can own a plant and you can't use it.
raw materials are being taken away from people and we are being starved out of the natural world economy.

economic developement is a version of natural organic developement.
developement (including softare developement) isn't a collection of things
that can be bought and sold but rather a process that yeilds things (software). and the growth and improvement of those processes is economic developement. We human beings come by economic creativity naturaly. When we see a "thing" that has been sold we also see it's underlying process. economically creative people then can take that process and improve on it or develope it either for themselves or for the marketplace. Just like a creative cook can cook you a really nice ceative loaf of bread. just like singer corporation invented the sewing machine and now we can go to the store and buy a sewing machine made by the Husqvarna corporation that is still a basic sewing machine "idea" but about a million times better. Thats organic economic developement. Is the singer corporation allowed to complain about Husqvarnas "emulation" if their product . No way. The "idea" or process of creating bread/sewing machine/car is not a comodity that should or can be fixed or copywrited in any way. It is unnatural and unhealthy and fascist oppression of the people to try to do so. When we are prevented from exercising our natural economic creativity in relationship to software due to fascist oppression we are trapped in an environment where the kind of work we are allowed to do is automatically steralized.And all ecoomic developement is haulted. In other words we are prevented from having access to generalities like the idea of "bread" in order to create new and improved
differentiations for ourselves and others. This is why comuters have stopped developing and the world technology economic deveopement is and will forever remain stalled and dysfunctional at the expense of all human being on the planet and toward the favor of essentailly one mega large only corporation.
run by the dark side of the force we are.

No, I don't think it's illegal. I don't even think it's immoral. I mean, you buy the game, who cares what platform you pay it on?

Besides, who would "steal" Microsoft's API? Seriously. My first encounter with Cedega was running GTA Vice City and Diablo II. No shit, it actually went faster in Linux, even though it was being emulated. Well not really emulated, it's more a compatibility layer. And also, Microsoft's "borrowed" enough code anyway :)

On the other hand, I don't believe what Transgaming are doing is right. Sure, it might be legal, but wine/winex was GPL. GPL says you have to let the source be available if it's requested, and you can't really sell it. But meh, what can you do. Write an open source Windows compatibility layer? Like wine was supposed to be :)

Anyway, just my opinion.

Aaron

:twocents: If you bought the program, then you should be allowed to use it. It doesn't matter what operating system it was designed for, you should be allowed to run it, guilt free, on the operating system of your choice. Why would you have to by a copy of XP to feel good about playing a wholey separate piece of software? Would I feel obliged to pay Ford because I put a set of fuzzy dice, made by some little old woman down the street, into my car? Absolutely not.

Wine/Cedega is your car, man. Put whatever fuzzy dice you want into it as long as you've paid for the dice (and the car if you are driving a Cedega).

You don't have to pay Microsoft for the privilege of using something that you've bought.

(Please note that I don't own any fuzzy dice, the analogy just came to me.)

Did Cedega work out a commercial license with Code Weavers? If so, they don't have to release source. Ever. Such is the beauty of offering software under a dual-licensing model.

Not GPL, LGPL.
Anyway, wine is 150% legal, everywhere on earth.
It is not reverse ingeneering of microsoft code and it is not emulating microsoft code either, it is an implementation of the same thing as windows.
Like AMD is implementing the code-set of Intel. Will you buy an intel processor along with your AMD just to pay the man who got the codeset first in the market? Thats crazy. You would have to buy the first IBM-PC compatible computer along the way and perhaps you would have to buy an antic bulb light with it.

Wine is a reverse engineered implementation of the Windows API, and there is absolutely nothing illegal about reverse engineering a program. The only real exception is if you use a decompiler, then simply recompile that generated code to product a new binary. Although you didn't copy the original source code from Microsoft in that instance, you created a directly-derivative work from Microsoft's code. What IS valid is examining the source to see how, say, the NTFS journal is maintained, and then reemplementing it cleanly. A purist approach would be to have one engineer analyze the code, take notes on the procedure (but not the code itself) and then handing over the design to another engineer for reimplementation, but that is by no means a legal requirement, but a CYA approach.

I beg to differ. WINE is not reverse engeneering. WINE implements documented windows APIs, the same API that programs use and they can use those APIs because those APIs are documented. Granted, the APIs are very very badly documented and they have to guess many things, but thats not reverse engeneering. Thats trying to get the public documentation of windows. When you write a program for windows, you do the same thing : you try to get how the API work in order to use it, thats not reverse engeneering since you use the documentation. Many companies are complaining at Microsoft for the lack of documentation in some cases, for instance Netscape is complaining about the hidden APIs used by Internet Explorer. Netscape is not reverse engeneering, it is just a program trying to use the API correctly. Microsoft is supposed to document the APIs correctly, and that is what the EU and the US governments are asking for. Or if they dont they breack the law. They are not asking Microsoft to release its source code. WINE is trying to implement all the APIs to make a maximum number of programs to work, that is why WINE developers need to know more about the APIs and that is why they are digging into the told and untold of the documentation. Thats defenitely not reverse ingeneering. At most they will reverse engeneer programs using the windows API in order to understand how they use it, but they have no interest in reverse engeneering the APIs themselves. If WINE was not legal, no windows program would be except Microsoft ones.

What could be considered reverse engeneering is this case :
the documentation says the API prints "hello", but actually the API prints "fuck you". Most program which are using this API know it prints "fuck you" because they were tested and the "hello" function did not work like in the documentation, so they are aware of it and they use it as it is working.
WINE has to test all the APIs and print "fuck you" when all programs are expecting to print "fuck you", even though the documentation was saying that the API was supposed to print "hello".

It's not like Wine is making you steal any Windows applications. You still have to buy the Windows application, just not the OS. But since you don't need the OS, why would you feel morally obligated to go buy it? My dishwasher was made to use another product - JetDry - to help with water spots. The manual specifically says to use JetDry and to put it into the special little holder made for it's use. Does that mean I'm obligated to go out and buy some JetDry, and give more money to a seperate manufacturer, just because my dishwasher tells me to? Couldn't I fill that little holder with kerosene and tell my dishwasher to take a hike? JetDry has no valid claim to go whining at me because I chose not to buy their product. Nor the dishwasher manufacturer whining because I didn't follow their recommendation (but obviously they wouldn't have to honor the warrantee - but Windows software vendors aren't required to support their products when run under Linux either). JetDry is good stuff BTW, I'm just using this as an example to illustrate the silliness of "moral obligation" to buy a product.

I should point out, having thought about this more. You are asking in a forum where most everyone has shunt off Windows, still others just wish they could. The whole issue from most of this community will be advicating the GPL style of free use open source licensing. If you ask a whole bunch of stuffy nosed Microsoft Chief ____ Officers, I am quite sure your response would be vastly different. Of course, the other way of looking at this is in terms of how it is written. Is wine stealing code, or are they mimicing the working of a product to a similar but different end? For shites... I would post his same moral question on a philosophy forum site, a legal forum site, and a Windows/Microsoft forum, to see the varied opinions and reactions.

WINE is not stealing code. You wouldnt get any different answer in any other forum if they were aware about what is WINE. WINE stand for WINE Is Not an Emulator. The answers you get here is from people who know and use WINE, perhaps even developers. On a philosophy forum site, you would just get people talking past each other and posing assumptions and demonstrating rules based on those assumptions. If the assumptions are incorrect, the result is necessatily incorrect. On a legal forum site, they would tell you WINE is 100% legal since no legal suite anywhere in the world has ever declared it illegal. On a Microsoft forum on the other hand, they would probably encourage you to buy a copy of Windows, but without any basis on reality or fact, they would just be doing their job which is to sell Windows. I bet they would encourage you to totally scrap linux and just use Windows based on technical issues, but not on legal/moral issues, they've quitted calling linux a communist cancer because it doesn't work.

WINE is not even trying to mimic the working of windows. It does just try to run programs written for windows. Same goals, different ways of doing it. But WINE doesnt try to mimic. The look and feel is different and WINE has a lot of functionalities that Windows lacks while windows has a lot of functionalities that WINE lacks. The purpose of WINE to run programs.
If Microsoft was making roads with that width and that 90% of cars were made to fit in that width, you would have a parking place in front of your house that can handle cars that width. But the parking place is not a mimic of the road. The road can be made of stones and the parking place can be made of wood, provided the car fits on both.