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Does Microsoft have the power to pull the plug on Linux gaming? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So I'm talking about playing previously Windows-only games on Linux, e.g. via proton.

I don't know about the libraries etc that are used - is it possible for Microsoft to use some legal voodoo, for example, to suddenly end it all, and make the use of their libraries illegal (if they belong to Microsoft in the first place)?

Or could there be other ways of interference?

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 4 months ago (7 children)

Proton is built on top of wine for windows compatibility. The wine project has been very careful to independent build its compatible versions of libraries. There should be no Microsoft code in wine.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (6 children)

I think should is the biggest risk here. With the source code leaks for Windows XP and others, I imagine it'd be quite tempting to reuse some of Microsoft's code for the more obscure API calls that aren't implemented yet. The Wine project itself does its very best to avoid doing that, but one lying contributor can throw a wrench into the works.

The people behind Wine are quite vigilant, so I don't think Microsoft will find any of its (closed source) code in the project.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Even then you can still have someone read the source and write a spec for a second programmer to write a library. The programmer never saw the source code but it was still useful. Still legal to do this. If someone dumped original source into the projector could be similarly checked for duplication without breaking the law.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

That's true, but white room reverse engineering requires two people to do what one person could do by just stealing the code. Plus, the person reading the source code would be "burned", they can't work on normal implementation after browsing the source.

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