Developers on the Windows compatibility project Wine have been forced to abandon an important feature due to the existence of a Borland patent.
The open source project Wine allows you to run unmodified Windows programs on Linux through a binary compatibility layer. It also allows you to compile Windows applications to create a Linux binary through a tool called Winelib. In a talk at the annual Wine Developer Conference in Stuttgart earlier this month, Wine developer Dimitrie Paun said that the development of Winelib is restricted by a Borland software patent.
Concerns about the Borland patent have prevented developers on the GCC project from adding structured exception handling (SEH) to the free software compiler. As SEH is commonly used in code that runs on the Windows platform, Wine users that want to use the Winelib feature must either modify their source code to remove SEH constructs or rely on a proprietary compiler, such as Microsoft's MSVC.
Paun told Builder UK on Thursday that relying on proprietary compilers is an unsatisfactory solution, and could impact the adoption of free software projects built for the Windows platform. "From a long term perspective, this is a problem because it means GCC is not even an option for people," said Paun. "They cannot adopt the native Linux toolchain, and they are stuck with using the Windows tools indefinitely."
"Having your FOSS project depend on a non-free tool can be a big problem in terms of adoption. Many distributions, such as Fedora [a free Linux distribution], have a principle of using only free software ââ,¬" they wouldn't be able to distribute such a package as they wouldn't be able to build it."
Paun said that software patents, such as the Borland patent, shouldn't be allowed, as they give large corporations an advantage over open source projects and SMEs. "Software patents are senseless and immoral," said Paun. "They slow down progress and cost everybody with the notable exception of a few very wealthy corporations that have signed cross-licensing deals."
Wine isn't the only open source project forced into an unsatisfactory work-around to avoid violating a patent. Last month, developer on the open source database PostgreSQL said that they had rewritten a piece of code to avoid violating an IBM patent.
Despite the growing number of examples of open source projects needing to rewrite code to avoid violating patents, the UK patent office has denied that the European software patent directive, which is due to go to parliament for a second reading in July, poses any threat to open source software.
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Alistair Phillips - 17/05/05
This is Borlands chance to either show themselves as pro Linux or well against.
Judging by how other company's are going I would hope that Borland would welcome Wine and allow them to do what they need without fear of the patent.
So Borland what is it going to be?
Alistair
http://www.0gravity.co.uk/
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2
Kristian Rink - 17/05/05
This is another good proof on what patents on software and algorithms are good for: To lock down development, restrict creation of software and prevent people from simply getting their work done. We really should do better in trying to get a patent law to work that actually protects _real_ innovation while on the other side preventing people from getting monopolies on merely nothing...
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3
Nico Baggus - 17/05/05
From the nl-parl ffii.org mailinglist:
The UK patent office might not be completely right about this. The ICC (international Chamber of Commerce) has in their minutes
http://www.iccwbo.org/iproadmap (page 24)
Business action
"While generally supportive of the original European Commission proposal
for a directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions,
business believed that the Directive should be clearer and should specify
unequivocally that computer programme products should be patentable. [...]
Business urges EU governments to adopt a common position based on the
May 2004 political agreement and the European Parliament to agree with this."
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4
Esteban Pacheco - 18/05/05
Just because they dont want to spend time doing a different approach to the exception handling, they cant keep developing.
So, after Borland did the job, payed their developers, spent their time doing it, now it should just give it up?
The Entire wine project in halt? for this? OMG, we are really in the wrong hands then if thats what open source is all about? one patent killed the development.
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5
R Mortimer - 13/09/06
This is not about hard work this is about reimplementing a simple idea. The idea is that you can trap all exceptions for a block of code rather than for every individual instruction. It is technical cluelessness and problems with the US patent office that allow this sort of patent to exist.
Also the problem is not so much with WINE but GCC the compiler that is not allowed to reimplement this simple time saving idea.
Patents are supposed to promote innovation (not protect IP rights that have suddenly magicked into existence in the last 20 year). Spurring innovation and just rewards used to be the justification of state granted Monopolies we are moving away from that to an East India Tea company state Monopoly model.
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