{"id":24869,"date":"2011-03-05T12:21:30","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T12:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2011\/03\/05\/when-commercial-interests-seep\/"},"modified":"2011-03-05T12:21:30","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T12:21:30","slug":"when-commercial-interests-seep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/05\/when-commercial-interests-seep\/","title":{"rendered":"When commercial interests seep into OpenSource: Good things can happen, but usually don’t."},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day, Julia and I decided to install SimCity 4 Deluxe<\/em><\/a>\"\" for Windows on one of our Linux<\/em> boxes. Using Wine<\/em><\/a>, the install went fine, but the program would not run. It would kind of start up but then die with no obvious explanation. With a bit of work I can probably find the reason and fix it, but first I went to the Wine<\/em> site to see what it said there, and I found, do my disappointment, mostly Geeksnarkese blithering among the amateur IT experts who had been playing around getting the once-popular city-simulation game running with the Linux<\/em> program that stands for W<\/strong>ine I<\/strong>s N<\/strong>ot an E<\/strong>mulator (wine).<\/p>\n

What I men by Geeksnarkese is a linguistic and cultural phenomenon that at one time prevailed in Linux<\/em> circles on the Internet (and elsewhere, in Windows fora and in Meatland as well) but is now, thankfully, less common. I’ll write about that some other time but there is a good chance you know what I mean. Anyway, it was impossible to figure out from them what was needed to get SimCity4<\/em> Deluxe to install, run, or run properly (though they claimed it could be done) because in Geeksnarkese one ends potentially helpful paragraphs with things like “… and I’ll let you figure that part out on your own” and substitutes key instructions with phrases like “… just set up your media drive to emulate a file in the correct path and adjust the permissions accordingly…” In other words, an amateur IT person who speaks mainly Geeksnarkese is merely an amateur for a reason!<\/p>\n

Anyway, frustrated with the inability of snot nosed kids working out of basements to communicate effectively, I downloaded Crossover Games<\/em><\/a>. Crossover<\/em><\/a> is the commercial implementation of Wine<\/em>. The money they make selling Crossover<\/em> is supposedly used to make Wine<\/em> better. I am pretty sure that Crossover<\/em> (the not-for-games version) is pretty good. At any given moment it lets you install and run a recent (but not necessarily the most recent) version of Microsoft Office<\/em><\/a> on your computer with no problems. I got it a long time ago because I simply needed to run Endnote<\/a> for a short while, and it worked flawlessly. It’s a nice product, and for a mere 30 bucks or so a year, it is an excellent option for transitions from Windows<\/em> to Linux<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But the free version you download to try it out is, as one might expect, stupid and annoying, as least for the games version. It had a strange menu and interactive system that was not easily understood but obviously designed to be clear and useful (they would do better if they didn’t just imagine that it was a good design, but actually tried it out with people other than those who know the system inside out). Then, at critical moments in the install process, an obnoxious dialog box would pop up asking one of those questions that didn’t really have an appropriate answer (it turns out that when you want<\/em> to click something like “I don’t want to pay now for the free trial version I downloaded nine seconds ago, but I do want to continue the current operation” you hit “Cancel<\/em>.” Dummies.<\/p>\n

Anyway, after all that mucking around, it turns out that Crossover for Games<\/em> produced the same exact result wine produced: Nothing. However, I think that other than their dumbass dialog boxes it might be the case that installation with Crossover for Games<\/em> was easier. The problem with installing Windows<\/em><\/a> games on Linux<\/em><\/a> is that Windows<\/em><\/a> games are inherently unsafe little security monsters, and it is hard to run unsafe things off of a CD. There are ways around that and Crossover for Games<\/em> might implement one of those ways (not sure).<\/p>\n

In any event, this particular foray into commercial software land produced the following results:<\/p>\n