Hi Sam, I'm sorry that I cannot participate by anything valuable than some words, I'm total noob in windows, so I cannot judge anything based on this technology, while i can classify myself as an average *IX expert :-). However, I think even the words can be of a litlle help here. > What is your mission Vitamin? Are you plain stupid? Bored? Are you trying to pick an argument? > Vitaliy is neither of this. He is a very good wine developer, which works hard to bring us users the best product possible. However, he doesn't like to explain by many words things, which can be summarized by one simple sentence. And his wording may seem a bit offending to somebody, maybe because he is not a native English speaker, but also because he has not so much time to search for every word he writes :-). Let me try to explain, what he is trying to explain to you or the others: 1) Windows OS, including Vista, is always a complex package of various components, layers, parts etc., which cannot be cleanly separated. Microsoft has been sued in the past for this "deep integration", especially that MSIE cannot be separated from the OS and sold separately. It means, that any windows application is highly depending on various other parts of the whole OS. 2) Some parts of the OS are encumbered with various patents, which are giving Microsoft a guarantee that nobody can reuse these parts/interfaces/methods without a special permission from them. And wine cannot ask for these. 3) If you read your Vista EULA, you will definitely find a clause saying that you cannot use any part of it out of the original OS. This is related not only to programs, but as well as to other, otherwise freely reusable components, like fonts, icons, wallpapers etc. For example even I am violating this, because I have installed a new family of Vista True Type fonts, which can be freely downloaded from the net, onto my Linux system. So, by running anything coming from Windows out of the windows OS, you are violating your Vista EULA. 4) The whole Wine project is under the focus of Microsoft and another big software companies, they are very closely watching every progress and verifying, that anything cannot be used against Wine. For example, there is a very strict policy that anybody who have seen anything from windows source code, cannot contribute to the wine sources anymore. And because Microsoft now opens its sources to more and more people (even in our university the students are working on it), it's more and more hard to find a "non-tainted" developers for the Wine project. So, it's really NECESSARY for the Wine project to stay absolutely clean, because otherwise it would be very dangerous for it. Please, think as many times as you like, about these things, and try to re-evaluate your wishes, it's REALLY better to stay out of Microsoft stuff for any Open Source project! With regards, Pavel Troller
