Re: [libreoffice-users] Linux alternative

On 18/07/15 01:29 PM, Tom Davies wrote:
> Hi :)
> +1
>
> But Wine is about bondage in the sense that it keeps you using stuff 
> that is made for Windows.
>
>
> Making stuff that needs Wine in order to work kinda keeps you 
> locked-in to the Windows world.
>
> By contrast we see many native Gnu&Linux programs are then ported over 
> to Mac and Windows apparently without a huge amount of effort.  
> Firefox and LibreOffice/OpenOffice are great examples of that as they 
> have then become serious competitors to alternatives that were only 
> written for Windows and then have been unable to be ported to anything 
> else.
>
> If programs plan to become cross-platform then initially writing for 
> Linux seems to be the optimum route. Writing for Mac seems to be the 
> next best option.
>
> Starting with Windows means programs or almost anything else faces a 
> nightmare up-hill struggle.  Even Microsoft themselves take an extra 
> whole year to port their office suite to Mac and even then it's a 
> stripped-down version.
>
>
> Writing for Wine is a neat trick that i have not heard of before.  It 
> sounds like it neatly avoids any need for porting at all.  Wine runs 
> on Mac too so that is all 3 major platform covered in one hit.  It 
> feels like there must be an inherent flaw aside from the ethical issue 
> of not quite breaking free of the Windows world.  If not why on earth 
> wouldn't everyone be doing this? ;)
>
> Regards from
> Tom :)
Not at all. Wine gives people the opportunity to leave Windows while 
still running the same software. So long as that software is under a 
Free license, what makes it any different from stuff that runs on JVM 
(for example)?

I don't need to port my programs when I use Wine/Libwine. They run 
perfectly on both platforms, And I don't need to have anything to do 
with Windows whereas if I "port" my programs, I need a Windows platform 
to test them on.

I feel like I'm perfectly free from the Windows world except that I need 
a VM to run an income tax program and to run Windows versions of 
browsers (did you know that the Windows version of Firefox doesn't 
always render pages the same as the Linux version?).

There is actually a fair amount of software developed to Windows APIs. 
Samba and Mono (and programs that use Mono) are two that come to mind 
immediately. Some people oppose this (especially when the Windows APIs 
aren't public) but others accept it as a small price to pay to spread 
Free Software.


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