The Curmudgeon Gamer recently posted his tirade against WINE. I'm not sure how I feel about WINE, so I'm going to try to pull out some of the threads of his argument that I thought were interesting. And play devil's advocate: mwah-hah-ha-ha.

(for the argument, read his blog. I'm trying to save valuable netspace here. :) Nevertheless, here's a summary of what I noticed:)

His concern is that if WINE becomes essentially functional, and Linux grabs some market share, then developers might sell software to Linux users and not provide any support for any problems that WINE hasn't yet solved. "It gives developers a reason not to put any effort into supporting Linux users."

I don't understand how WINE has much effect in this equation. If Intuit decided to make Quicken for Linux, and there were some problems with it, they'd either patch it up or say "screw 'em", depending on whether they thought it paid enough to bother or not. Whether it was running under WINE or not.

If Linux gets 5% market share, then there's a (smallish) motive to sell to that market. A development house might try to port their app, or see if their app runs under an emulator, or contract someone to do either of those things. But how much support you'll get just depends on how much money the company reckons they'll make or lose. If they ported something over, and it didn't work because the device drivers in linux weren't as mature, or the threads don't work the way they do in Windows, or whatever, you're in the exact same situation: the company will fix it or cut bait, depending on what the profits look like. And if they cut bait, they'll blame the device drivers or Linus or whatever, just like they'd blame WINE if they were running under WINE.

Now, perhaps the Curmudgeon is saying that a company will feel it can enter the Linux market through WINE, and not make any porting effort at all. Which is probably true. But I think along with that you'll get companies who check to see if they run under WINE successfully so that they can advertise "and, for all you kooky Linux users, it works under WINE!" They might even try to work under WINE as a design consideration. Again, if there's profit in it. These same companies might not be willing to invest the developer effort that actually rebuilding an app for a new operating system would take. You're getting some degree of catering to the Linux user, when without WINE, you wouldn't get anything.

The Curmudgeon is grumpy (I know, redundant statement) that Linux software consumers are treated like, and will be treated like, "second-class citizens." But the fact is, from the average Windows software company's point of view, Linux is at best a secondary market, regardless of the presence of WINE.

Tell me I'm wrong!