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Winelib Hobbled by Exception-Handling Patent
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu May 12, 2005 02:55 PM
from the cheese-with-your-wine dept.
from the cheese-with-your-wine dept.
davidwr writes "UKBuilder.com reports that Borland's structured exception handling (SEH) patent affects Winelib. Winelib allows you to compile Windows-targeted code to run natively on Linux. Because of the patent, gcc does not include support for SEH, which is widely used in the MS-Windows world. There are workarounds, but you won't like them."
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Who Next? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who else may have submarine patents might affect the development of Wine?
What patent? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What patent? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Who Next? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you figure? TFA simply says that gcc can't implement the features because Borland has a patent. This means that people wanting to use Winelib must remove the SEH portions of their code in order for it to compile. This is a story about a shortcoming of gcc and Winelib because so many Windows C++ developers use SEH instead of sticking to standard C++. I see no threat of lawsuit from Borland or any potential for it.
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Re:Who Next? (Score:5, Insightful)
By suing the Wine folks, they'd shoot themselves in the foot.
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Good point, Borland is Wine friendly, so... (Score:5, Insightful)
...here's an idea that maybe nobody has tried yet.
Ask them.
Rather than do the collective F/OSS thing and lose our minds about a software patent that's in the way...how about asking Borland if we may write something their patent covers?
Has it at least been tried yet?
Yes, software patents are evil. And yes, exception handling has tons of prior art. And still yes, this is freaking obvious. But still. It's only a problem if they complain, and they're less likely to do so if we just simply do the good manners thing and ask first.
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Donation please... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or better... (Score:5, Insightful)
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FUD? (Score:5, Informative)
My first thought was, gee, that's not been my experience--as I recall, although it was complicated, it was rather well documented. So I did a bit of Google and found that other people seemed to agree with me (i.e., they say things like "Furthermore, compared to the other compiler projects, GCC offered the most comprehensive documentation for backend porters." [tu-chemnitz.de] and so forth).
The only thing I could find that even sort of suport your claim was RMS's thing [gnu.org] about not wanting the backend to drift into becoming an LGPL black-box (thus chilling the development of new GPL'd front ends).
So, do you care to back your claim up?
--MarkusQ
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Of course (Score:5, Interesting)
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Ugly workaround? (Score:5, Funny)
Use Windows? (ducks)
Re:Ugly workaround? (Score:5, Funny)
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Is that ironic (Score:5, Informative)
Amazing how thing like this rear their head AFTER a company that holds the Patent actually used the app in their OWN product, can you say STINGY
no, it's legally interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:no, it's legally interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
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Stupid software patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, I hate software patents. There's no point.
Most of what you'd want to protect is covered by copyright. If it can't be covered by copyright, well, then it's something so basic (like "the dog is big") that it's almost impossible to express something without doing it that way.
Again, this is where the idea of a software patent is stupid. Don't allow people to do things in ways that you really couldn't cover with copyright?
Ok, now I find myself back to the argument that source code is speech, and hence not patentable.
GCC list discussion (Score:5, Informative)
Links to an implementation of this can be found in this mail [gnu.org], the legality of this implementation is discussed in the followup.
The inevitable prior-art discussion begins here [gnu.org].
This is good news for open source. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even worse, this makes it clear that using patent-encumbered software has a genuinely unpleasant viral effect on all your software.
The pro-patent folks will eventually realize that the best solution is to avoid ALL patent-encumbered software COMPLETELY -- and look even more skeptically at all proprietary software, too. This will have the opposite effect of what they had intended.
Ask Nicely (Score:5, Insightful)
I recently advised a graphic designer/artist friend whose Flash app (advertising a minor celebrity pool player) drew the ire of an OSS "advocate". They demanded that the Flash movie be replaced with something that didn't require any "closed source" software to use it. My friend and I replied politely with their cost:benefit analysis (>95% of desktops can use Flash), the fact that Flash is an open standard (SWF), and the reality of making choices that can't please everyone, so the best alternative is chosen. The "advocate" devolved into namecalling and refusal to accept any of the designer/artist's reasons as valid. Which not only lost that private argument on facts, but alienated any possiblity of the designer/artist exploring OSS possibilities, as long as reliable old Flash still works.
If you're going to request that Borland release its constraints on Winelib, remember that you catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar. And that invitations to a company to join the OSS "community" makes you an ambassador from your community. Which demands high performance in charm and persuasion, rather than represent the community as a barbarian horde.
Re:Ask Nicely (Score:5, Insightful)
Second:
I recently advised a graphic designer/artist friend whose Flash app (advertising a minor celebrity pool player) ...
Don't ever let him get rid of that Flash. I've found that when I see a webpage that invites me to download Flash, I can just close that tab: there's nothing there for me to see. That's saved me a great deal of time and bandwidth which I might have wasted if those sites had used animated gifs instead.
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There's an uber-workaround (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember, patents don't mean you can't code it. You can code it. You can use it for personal non-commercial use. You can distribute the code. But you can't use it commercially, distribute binaries, or sell it.
So the coders can continue doing their merry work, producing code that would violate patents were it compiled and distributed, and the distributors can continue merrily distributing the code in Europe.
The only people who are left out of this are Americans who would have to buy licenses from Borland to use the code in the US. That's fine; Americans should either pay according to their laws or change their laws.
But we shouldn't let American laws affect the rest of the world where they don't apply.
We need to start doing this for all open source software. There is no way to avoid trampling on patents if you're writing any fairly large or complex piece of software these days, especially any software that involves codecs, pre-existing APIs, and pre-existing file formats. Well, just about any useful piece of large software involves such things. Rather than getting into a hissy-fit on Slashdot every time some patent issue is discovered, open source developers should just plan for the problem and plan to bypass it.
The patent situation is not like the copyright situation. Copyright laws are roughly similar everywhere in the world and they are enforcable everywhere in the world. There are wide divergences in patent law around the world and most of the world is not burdened by America's folly in this regard. Why should developers bear the burden of one country's legal folly? Answer: developers shouldn't, and should simply pick the right jurisdiction for hosting the project.
This isn't some radical idea here. MPlayer, for example, could not possibly exist as a US-based project. US coders can and do contribute to it, but it's based in Hungary, where it's safe.
Re:There's an uber-workaround (Score:5, Insightful)
``As of now.'' Something about your proposal is worrying me, but as of now I can't put my finger on it.
Yes, it's a good, sensible plan for today, but there's this terrible [ffii.org] little [zdnet.co.uk] flaw [wired.com] which keeps it from being a long term solution.
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Re:There's an uber-workaround (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. The European Patent Office (EPO) has issued thousands of software patents. There are just doubts as to their enforcability, and several member countries do not accept them at all. This is what the new EU directive (CIID) is all about.
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Only for porting windows apps to linux .... (Score:5, Interesting)
using the MS tools and linking the app with winlib.
Before you flame this, consider who would be doing this....someone who has a closed source application already working on Windows and wants to sell his application to the Linux market. IIRC, winlib is licensed under the LGPL, so this approach would be legal. (and this is EXACTLY how Coral ported Wordperfect 2000 from windows to Linux).
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
--grendel drago
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