Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

February 22, 2005

Windows updates blocks WINE

Filed under: Computer Related — Suramya @ 2:38 AM

Just read this article on Betanews which tells about a special function in the Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation program that seems to check for a registry key used by WINE (An open source implementation of Windows API’s). If the program encounters the key it shows an error message and exits.

This on its own is not that bad, but if this is not stopped here whats to stop MS from using the same detection procedure on other programs and prevent them from running on wine? Their main target would probably be the MS Office Application suite which a lot of people run on Linux using Crossover Office. Soon they might decide that its against the EULA to run MS Office on a non-windows platform. Apple did the same thing with the OS X, by making it illegal to run it on non apple branded hardware.

I personally don’t care that much ’cause I run Linux and don’t run Wine on my system. I have a seperate windows machine where I run the Windows only software I use [Warcraft, Diablo etc etc] and all the MS software I have is legal and licenced. (For a change)

On the other hand its pretty disturbing. Lets see if the courts decide that this is a breach of law.

Original Story: BetaNews

– Suramya

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