On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 10:14:50AM +0100, Mike Hearn wrote: > >Yyyy! > >I hate license issues! > >I can see that for many people this wouldn't be an issue, because they > >probably have some old Win 98 CD/Licens somewhere (if they even care). > >But for a company that would like to send it as part of an embedded > >computer with Linux I can se a lot of problems. > > OK. I don't really know the details of licensing in embedded scenarios > but I can see it would cause problems.
Ditto. > >But that was per development project, not per system we want to use OPC in. > > Ah, I see. Surely if you depend on Windows though you *already* have to Are they already using it? Maybe they're just looking at options right now. > pay for Windows on a per-system basis? No? Or do you get bulk deals ... Well, even here, buying a site licence (even for 98 or ME or something) should cost much less than $3000-4000 for the native solution, (right?) and you could always say have Windows on the embedded device and disabled (or included on a useless CD packaged with the device) and then use the single dll or group of dlls to do RPC in wine on Linux on the device, right? I mean, Microsoft would still be paid for their work on the dlls, so shouldn't that be okay? > >That is good ;-) > >In the industry we are a lot of people who really question the total > >madness of letting the OPC standard be that depended on Windows, when it > >is supposed to be a "free" organization. And no one has come up with a low cost or open source Linux version yet? How unusual. You could always ask people in the industry to help in funding, development, setup, improvement and/or testing of such a system (low cost or open source). > >My hope if I can get this to work is to publish a site on the net so all > >who want to use Linux in the industrial computing can do that quite easy... > >But then we have the license issues to :-( What about HOWTOs or guides and info on the experience? That would be a start... > Yes. Unfortunately there are (as far as I know) only 4 DCOM > implementations in the world: > > 1) the one in Microsoft Windows > 2) DCOM for UNIX, which is based on Microsofts code > 3) Wines > 4) Cedegas (this is similar to Wines but more advanced, at least for > InstallShield support) > > The only one that is under a liberal license is Wines which is > incomplete. The only way to solve this problem is by having a > free-as-in-speech implementation of DCOM, which means extending and > improving Wine. > >Ok, now I understand, and also why I got confused before. > > > >And there is a lot of work needed to make DCom to work in Wine? > >Is someone working on it or is it something that not is that important in > >other cases? > > Yes, it's a fair amount of work. Currently nobody is working on it as > their primary project - Rob Shearman and I did some work on it for > iTunes/InstallShield support lately and most of our code is motivated by > InstallShield. > > It is something that we want to do though, because we currently depend > on native DCOM for a lot of stuff, like installers/office embedding/etc > etc ... so there's interest there at least from CodeWeavers side. But > we're certainly not committed to anything. > > One possible plan is this: if it is true that there is general, > widespread concern over OPC depending on Windows in the industry, > perhaps you could get together with other companies and form a > consortium to fund the development of an LGPLd DCOM implementation in > Wine. This would allow you to write DCOM based software anywhere that > Wine runs and be independent of Microsoft and licensing costs. I think this sound intreaging and a good concept. Even if you start small, (i.e 2-5 companies) the concept could grow bigger over time. > I think if funding was available in the right amounts Jeremy could be > persuaded to have CW at least put some hours into it and I know at least > one guy from ReactOS wants to work on it too. But I can't say for sure. Would in this case, you want to say that the funding would have the clause that code provided would have to be LGPLed, included in WineHQ/Wine, and would be owned by the writer(s)? :D > Anyway, it was just a thought. > > thanks -mike > Just a few comments. --Michael Chang
