The FLOSS ethos and the morality of Cedega

[Inversius]

Is it just me or are others concerned about the fact that TransGaming, which has 'borrowed' significantly from the WINE project, is not doing the community any favors? I could probably even swallow their proprietary approach if they just charged a moderate one-off fee for the use of their code, but no, users have to just keep on feeding the coins in the slot as the meter ticks. The very antithesis of FOSS.

The thing that really gets me is this nonsense about a 'community' they spout. Sure, they're happy to listen to what the suckers want - as long as the patsies keep feeding the coins that is. Community implies reciprocated altruism - there is no goodwill factor here, just the very worst of cynical capitalism.

While Gentoo and Debian were 'discouraged' from including Cedega in their repositories for fear of undermining TGs revenue, what about WINE's 'revenue'? Every minute gamers spend testing and posting on titles for Cedega, is time they have not spent on improving WINE, a true FLOSS app. Personally I'd rather boot Windows (gag!) than pay TG for the use of Cedega - at least MS don't pretend to be anything other than a pack of money crazed $*^%$#s!

[RealNC]

They should make a law against Cedega and also declare all our assets as public property and rename the country to Soviet States of America.

[L33F3R]

yea it was a shitty thing they did, but at the time it was under BSD or some similar license that didn't require them to open code.

best thing you can do is not buy it.

FOSS or Proprietary, I will use whatever is better. But this is a very low blow tho as far as morality goes.

All i can say is, oh well. Let them abuse it, nothing we can do. At least we can sleep at night knowing that we dont sink to such levels. Well. I cant, Im a frigin hellspawn.

[Inversius]

They should make a law against Cedega and also declare all our assets as public property and rename the country to Soviet States of America.

Have shares in Cedega do we?:rolleyes:

Seriously though, I was commenting of the morality of a commercial enterprise profiting from community donated code, not on the evils of capitalism in general (That would be a whole other post :) ).

BTW Which country should we change the name of? This is an international community; I'm writing from Australia and the man himself comes from Finland for goodness sake :p

[Inversius]

At least we can sleep at night knowing that we dont sink to such levels. Well. I cant, Im a frigin hellspawn.

Hey, this has nothing to do with my own morality - I'm only comfortable commenting on the morality of others :D

[RealNC]

Have shares in Cedega do we?:rolleyes:

Nope :D

Seriously though, I was commenting of the morality of a commercial enterprise profiting from community donated code, not on the evils of capitalism in general (That would be a whole other post :) ).

Well, they seem to submit code to Wine, even though they are not obliged to do it. And, after all, the Wine developers could do the same what the Cedega developers do. No one is holding them back. The difference is that Cedega's devs get paid. Perhaps that's why they do a better job :D

Money is good for software. Not always. But most of the time.

[Zhick]

Well, they seem to submit code to Wine, even though they are not obliged to do it.
From what I've gathered they pretty much stopped submitting code to wine when they changed their licence to the lgpl, and only recently started to do so again because they integrated some of wines lgpl'ed parts into Cedega again and thus were very much obliged to submit changes to those parts again (well, they don't need to submit them back, but to release them as well as lgpl):
TransGaming contributes any substantive changes to LGPL covered code to the Wine project (http://www.winehq.org), via the wine-devel and wine-patches mailing lists.
And, after all, the Wine developers could do the same what the Cedega developers do.
CrossOver anyone?
No one is holding them back. The difference is that Cedega's devs get paid. Perhaps that's why they do a better job :D Money is good for software. Not always. But most of the time.
From what I've heard most people say wine/CrossOver actually seems to work better than Cedega for them.

[djack]

From what I've heard most people say wine/CrossOver actually seems to work better than Cedega for them.

Or at least equally as good.

I used top be a Cedega subscriber (there - I admit it.. I feel much better now for getting that into the open). They consistently failed to get the games I wanted (mainly Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 and Planescape) working or make any visible progress into making them work.

The rift between them and Wine was one thing. To my mind, they didn't seem that bothered about pushing Windows gaming. They have 'ported' several games over to Mac using their version of winelib yet aside from The Sims (I think - correct me if I'm wrong pls) they haven't bothered doing anything like that on the Linux side to show Linux market potential.

[RealNC]

From what I've heard most people say wine/CrossOver actually seems to work better than Cedega for them.

Yes, but how long did it take them? Years. The games I can now play fine in Wine were playable in Cedega years ago. Now they're old anyway :D

[Dragonlord]

There's a huge difference between the two. Cedega managed to get games working... but only THESE games. Wine is about making a general solution. Hence Cedega specialices on some games to make them run with game specific hacks but this is totally unsuitable for Wine as they do not want specific hacks but make a complete emulation. In this regard support Wine if you want to support any of the two since Cedega is a shitty bunch of single game hacks and not worth a dime in the end.

[a7v-user]

IMO Wine develops a lot faster then Cedega. Cedega just had a head start and focus on getting only a handful of features/games working. It's not that I dislike Transgaming that much (although they did get lots of stuff for free), they're just a bunch of people making a living and they do give back some patches to Wine occasionally.

When it comes to getting games working in Linux I prefer the open-source model of Wine though. Being able to help out and try some community patches can be really fun not to mention a lot faster then waiting on Transgaming employees. They'd have to get it scheduled and approved, then someone has to run out and buy the game before they can start on it. I've heard they had some TG Beta program running now though, but to me that feels a lot like donating my work/time while they make money from it.

[Naib]

Thing is when Cedega kicked off (before WINE went gpl) it really was the only sol'n to windows-gaming in linux.

They marketed it well. With the promise of porting back their code to wine. A promise that never came...
Not only that with time it became VERY apparent that Cedega was only going todo hot fixes to get the top games working. If your game no longer was top of the list they didn't bother fixing their code to repair what broke.

Likewise when WINE went GPL they actually started making more progress


But what really pissed me off was they were taking Linux users good money and then investing it into OSX work such that OSX could get Spore...
makes me sick !

[Naib]

OMG!!! it is has gotten worse then when I last looked

just look at the number of games the Cedega has "brought" to Mac
A Mac user just has to pay for the game and it comes with needed cedega files to work

BUT a linux user has to buy the game and then "licence" Cedega, if they stop paying, they stop playing

Cedega is just milking linux users!

Warhammer OnlineTransGaming's Cider Brings Warhammer Online to Mac
TransGaming brings Tale of Tales new game to the Mac
Freaky CreaturesTransGaming Brings Abandon Interactive's Freaky Creatures To Mac
Ubisoft Announces New Mac TitlesUbisoft® Announces New Mac Titles (plural!!!!)
City of HeroesCity of Heroes Now Available for the Mac
TransGaming Enables BioWare's Jade Empire: Special Edition for the Mac


its discusting

[L33F3R]

lol. someone want to partner with L33F3R on a FLOSS website of shame?

[deanjo]

OMG!!! it is has gotten worse then when I last looked

just look at the number of games the Cedega has "brought" to Mac
A Mac user just has to pay for the game and it comes with needed cedega files to work

BUT a linux user has to buy the game and then "licence" Cedega, if they stop paying, they stop playing

Cedega is just milking linux users!

Warhammer OnlineTransGaming's Cider Brings Warhammer Online to Mac
TransGaming brings Tale of Tales new game to the Mac
Freaky CreaturesTransGaming Brings Abandon Interactive's Freaky Creatures To Mac
Ubisoft Announces New Mac TitlesUbisoft® Announces New Mac Titles (plural!!!!)
City of HeroesCity of Heroes Now Available for the Mac
TransGaming Enables BioWare's Jade Empire: Special Edition for the Mac


its discusting

Not sure how you figure that Cedega is milking the linux users for OS X. Every one of those ports for OS X they get paid licensing from the publisher / developer for use of the Cider engine. That licensing free is us ultimately paid by the OS X user.

[benmoran]

"Milking" is an appropriate term.
Regardless of whether or not the licensing fee is absorb into the final product price, the end user only pays one fee. Linux users have to buy the game, and keep paying fees forever (or as long as they want to play the game). If that doesn't describe milking Linux users, I don't know what does.

[deanjo]

"Milking" is an appropriate term.
Regardless of whether or not the licensing fee is absorb into the final product price, the end user only pays one fee. Linux users have to buy the game, and keep paying fees forever (or as long as they want to play the game). If that doesn't describe milking Linux users, I don't know what does.

If there were game publishers actually interested in publishing a linux release you would enjoy the same benefit. A license is guaranteed revenue, a middleware product that some may buy is not.

[jntesteves]

Yeah, but they don't choose to bring these games to Mac and not to Linux. That's what they are being paid for. It's the GAME PUBLISHERS that DON'T GIVE A SHIT to GNU/Linux users.

Now, about what Cedega did with the code they borrowed from WINE and built their product upon, they should have learned from Apple that released all source code they got from FreeBSD, KDE, etc, under the terms of the same FOSS licenses they got. Even the code they didn't have to. Now everybody praise them a lot.

But nowadays Cedega isn't that great when compared to the actual state of WINE, a true and complete implementation of the W32 ABI, fully binary compatible, with most accompanying libraries already implemented.

[deanjo]

Yeah, but they don't choose to bring these games to Mac and not to Linux. That's what they are being paid for. It's the GAME PUBLISHERS that DON'T GIVE A SHIT to GNU/Linux users.


Exactly my point, you can bitch at Transgaming all you want but it is the publishers that decide what gets ported. Cedega offers a solution to ease the "port" nothing more nothing less. Lets face it Cedega has probably made more with just the EA deal then it did in years trying to live off a subscription base linux solution with a constantly moving target. With OS X they have guaranteed revenue through licensing, stable platform, and enjoy 3rd party marketing for their product. It just makes financial sense to support OS X vs a potential "hit or miss" market like linux gaming.

[joeelmex]

Im a Cedega member and I am one happy gamer. I just want to enjoy my games on Linux. Now Transgaming has said all improvements on Cider, they will implement back to Cedega. So for example warhammer online is in beta testing for Mac all-ready so pretty soon it will be playable in Cedega.

I have played both Crysis games using cedega and play left 4 dead on it just about everyday. Im just stating that I dont mind being a member and being able to play my games in Linux.

[yogi_berra]

Is it just me or are others concerned about the fact that TransGaming, which has 'borrowed' significantly from the WINE project, is not doing the community any favors? I could probably even swallow their proprietary approach if they just charged a moderate one-off fee for the use of their code, but no, users have to just keep on feeding the coins in the slot as the meter ticks. The very antithesis of FOSS.

They're not a good company, if you don't like 'em don't use their product. A consumer boycott in this shallow market will damage their business irreparably. Also, If they violate any laws in your country take them to court.


Problems solved.

[deanjo]

They're not a good company, if you don't like 'em don't use their product. A consumer boycott in this shallow market will damage their business irreparably. Also, If they violate any laws in your country take them to court.


Problems solved.

Thing is that they have not broken any laws. The fork of wine that they sprouted from is from a MIT-license. With the Cider deals that they are signing it's very unlikely that a boycott of Cedega would have any appreciable damage to TransGaming.

[nanonyme]

They're not a good company, if you don't like 'em don't use their product. A consumer boycott in this shallow market will damage their business irreparably. Also, If they violate any laws in your country take them to court.Or rather than boycotting Cedega, you could support Wine buy buying from CodeWeavers who cooperate with Wine.

[Dragonlord]

Better idea, do not support non-native solutions at all <.=.<

[nanonyme]

Sure, I've nothing against you buying native Linux games. :3 (or rather non-Windows ones; not that I would have anything against you buying Windows games either)

[yogi_berra]

Thing is that they have not broken any laws. The fork of wine that they sprouted from is from a MIT-license.

I was talking about their advertising that may violate consumer protection laws in some jurisdictions.

With the Cider deals that they are signing it's very unlikely that a boycott of Cedega would have any appreciable damage to TransGaming.

People said the same thing about the K-Mart boycott, they went into chapter 11 bankruptcy because of it. A boycott that successfully convinced paying members to stop paying for Cedega and move to wine or CxGames would hurt their business.

@nanonyme - That is boycotting Cedega.

[nanonyme]

@nanonyme - That is boycotting Cedega.Boycotting implies I'd somehow try to get people not to buy their products and not buy them myself imo. I wasn't encouraging towards that. I mostly noted that Wine benefits from buying CodeWeaver's products and doesn't from buying Cedega's. It's more a matter on whether you care about Wine or not than whether you want to boycott Cedega.

[deanjo]

I was talking about their advertising that may violate consumer protection laws in some jurisdictions.

People said the same thing about the K-Mart boycott, they went into chapter 11 bankruptcy because of it. A boycott that successfully convinced paying members to stop paying for Cedega and move to wine or CxGames would hurt their business.

@nanonyme - That is boycotting Cedega.


Would you care to give an example of how their advertising violates any potential consumer laws? If anything they are very forward and up front with their products capabilities.

Even say if you did find such an example in local jurisdiction cases violations are usually met with a full refund of the product to the users that fall in that jurisdiction. Even in extreme cases such as data loss the settlement is more then likely going to result in a extended length of service to those effected customers such as Intuit and Apple's cases of data loss with Quickbooks and Apple's .Me service.


K-Mart died because of crooked ownership and their inability to modernize their company. They were broke well ahead of any boycott.

[energyman]

well, once upon a time wine was bsd licenced. Transgaming forked and never contributed back, so it was changed to lgpl.
Result: todays wine is much better than Transgamings old fork.

[christian_frank]

well, once upon a time wine was bsd licenced. Transgaming forked and never contributed back, so it was changed to lgpl.
Result: todays wine is much better than Transgamings old fork.

When it comes to gaming, thats simply wrong..

[deanjo]

When it comes to gaming, thats simply wrong..

True, especially when it comes to copy protection scheme's where Trans works with the copy protection issue. More times then not, wine requires use of a "crack" that may violate the DMCA and other similar laws in other countries.

[joeelmex]

When it comes to gaming, thats simply wrong..


I agree with the above statement. I tried lots of combinations to get left 4 dead to work on wine and at 1 point it did run. It was laggy, random crashes and FPS where down in the teens. I tried it in Cedega, everything worked on the first try. I really dont know why people get so upset at Cedega. My point of view, I get to play the games I want to play in Linux, right now I am playing the new prince of persia on it and having a blast. Now I respect everyone opinions and if you dont like the product dont become a member.

I dont feel robbed becoming a member and paying a yearly membership for the program. The reason games change and they need keep changing the codes to make newer game run or if a game gets a patch a new engine needs to be used to solve the issue. I can have all the previous engines installed and sometime older games run better in the older engine then the current one.

Honestly I dont see them as being bad, they keep me of having to install another OS on my Raid 0 just for gaming and I just run 1 OS, Ubuntu 64 9.04.

[TwistedLincoln]

I've been able to get almost every game I have to work just fine in Wine with minimal effort.

I used to be a Cedega member, back when it was a one-time purchase, and you just had to be a continuing member for updates. Now that they've made the main software subscription-based, I have no interest at all at any price.

Subscription-based licensing is unacceptable in almost every case. I have no problem with paying for updates, but I have no intention to continue to pay to keep using something I already own...

[yogi_berra]

Would you care to give an example of how their advertising violates any potential consumer laws? If anything they are very forward and up front with their products capabilities.

Since when are their adds upfront and forward? An upfront and forward would have an advert saying that such and such game _may_ work after such and such configuration option is changed and it _may_ or _may__not_ perform well. I have never seen an advertisement from them stating the fact that their product is hit and miss.

Most if not all of their e-mail advertisements I have seen have advertised an "out-of-the-box" experience with "better performance than windows" claims which often are simply not true and amount to lying. This would appear to violate truth in advertising laws.


K-Mart died because of crooked ownership and their inability to modernize their company. They were broke well ahead of any boycott.

Actually they weren't, but whatever.

[deanjo]

Since when are their adds upfront and forward? An upfront and forward would have an advert saying that such and such game _may_ work after such and such configuration option is changed and it _may_ or _may__not_ perform well. I have never seen an advertisement from them stating the fact that their product is hit and miss.

Most if not all of their e-mail advertisements I have seen have advertised an "out-of-the-box" experience with "better performance than windows" claims which often are simply not true and amount to lying. This would appear to violate truth in advertising laws.

Every game that is Cedega supported has a freely accessible rating which tells you what works and what doesn't.


Actually they weren't, but whatever.
I really would recommend reading Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins: How Incompetence Tainted and American Icon.

http://www.amazon.com/Kmarts-Ten-Deadly-Sins-Incompetence/dp/0471435937

[a7v-user]

Every game that is Cedega supported has a freely accessible rating which tells you what works and what doesn't.

Not quite.
For example the freely accessible rating of Fallout 3 shows that the installer works without issues using Cedega 7.3, while that the game "runs with issues" using Cedega 7.1.
Non-subscribers can't see which issues the rating is talking about. Browsing the freely readible forums shows a few threads about people not even making it past birth scene or even past the main menu. Might be broken linux drivers or hardware on their machines but that's far from enjoyable.

[deanjo]

Not quite.
For example the freely accessible rating of Fallout 3 shows that the installer works without issues using Cedega 7.3, while that the game "runs with issues" using Cedega 7.1.
Non-subscribers can't see which issues the rating is talking about. Browsing the freely readible forums shows a few threads about people not even making it past birth scene or even past the main menu. Might be broken linux drivers or hardware on their machines but that's far from enjoyable.

Fallout 3 is not a Cedega certified game.

http://www.cedega.com/gamesdb/games/view.html?game_id=5151


This game is not Certified. Games without Certification may still work in Cedega. See how other Cedega Gaming Service Member's rated this game in the Community Ratings.

For more information on how to get Fallout 3 working see the Work Arounds section.
So what is a Cedega Certified Game, click on the (i) link in the certification box.


A Cedega Certified game has been tested by both Cedega Gaming Service staff and the Cedega Beta Team on a wide variety of systems and hardware and is known to work on systems that meet the requirements for Cedega. Cedega Gaming Service Members may request assistance from Support Staff to get Certified games working on their system.
Cedega Certified games may experience modest working issues on some system setups, distributions, or hardware, however core game functionality is supported for all Members. Check the Games Database pages for more details on known issues.
Games that are not listed as Cedega Certified are operational at varying levels, but technical support is not available from Cedega support staff. Cedega Community support for all games is available to all Members through a variety of support channels See the Games Database pages for more information on non-Certified games working status and Community reported issues.

All of this is freely viewable on their site. You don't need to be a member. Like I said they are very up front about what cedega can do.

[L33F3R]

just because its a cedega certified game doesnt make the game cedega certified (or something like that). These games break all the time after patches and it can take months to see it fixed (except WoW).

[deanjo]

just because its a cedega certified game doesnt make the game cedega certified (or something like that). These games break all the time after patches and it can take months to see it fixed (except WoW).

Yes, but if you subscribe you would also be able to pick the cedega engine to address such issues. Cedega allows you to pick multiple versions of the engine, so if something breaks in a later release you can always revert to an earlier version for that game. Keep in mind that games break all the time as well in windows and it can take months to get those fixed as well. Wine has these issues as well.

[christian_frank]

I've been able to get almost every game I have to work just fine in Wine with minimal effort.

I used to be a Cedega member, back when it was a one-time purchase, and you just had to be a continuing member for updates. Now that they've made the main software subscription-based, I have no interest at all at any price.

Subscription-based licensing is unacceptable in almost every case. I have no problem with paying for updates, but I have no intention to continue to pay to keep using something I already own...

I think i have to clarify some things...

The subscription modell of cedega hasn't changed for the time i'm a subscriber now..

You can subscribe to cedega for 6 or 12 month.
If you don't renew your subscription, cedega will still continue to work. But you don't have access to udates or engines anymore...

[a7v-user]

Ah, I thought it sounded strange that Cedega would drastically change their business modell so you'd have to be subscribed to play.

I still think it's wrong that non-subscribers can't see more info in the Games Database. "Works with issues"?? Which issues, how serious are they? Are there workarounds? I wont know before I hand over my cash, will I? Just out of curiosity, which issues does Fallout3 have? I do know it's not on the cedega supported list, but that is rather short list considering how many games there are out there.

If Transgaming PR department have blocked that info, trying to make Cedega look better, then why can I still read the whines and gripes on the cedega forums?

Sorry to sound like I have a strong distaste for TG, Cedega or those that use it, I don't. I was a cedega subscriber a long time ago but since the games I wanted to play weren't on the cedega supported list I had to wait weeks or months before some Cedega developper accidently touched the right piece of code and hope that it did improve my gaming experience. With Wine I can benefit from some quick dirty patches from some other gamer or developer.

[TwistedLincoln]

I think i have to clarify some things...

The subscription modell of cedega hasn't changed for the time i'm a subscriber now..

You can subscribe to cedega for 6 or 12 month.
If you don't renew your subscription, cedega will still continue to work. But you don't have access to udates or engines anymore...

(sorry to bump so late, but this is an important issue...)

Newer versions of Cedega (starting with 7, I think) don't have an option to download the engine from the website manually and install it locally from within the program. Instead, you have to give the software your Cedega account details, and it downloads the engine for you.

This causes two HUGE problems, depending on how it is implimented (which I can't test, since I'm not a member any more):

1) If what you say is true, and you don't get engines or updates anymore, it wouldn't fetch the engine, and therefore you could never reinstall.

OR

2) If the program does allow you to download the engine (but only the last one available when you were still a member), it still has to "phone home" to get it -- this means that once your version is not supported anymore, or Cedega goes out of business, you'll never be able to reinstall.

Either option is completely unacceptable.

[yogi_berra]

Newer versions of Cedega (starting with 7, I think) don't have an option to download the engine from the website manually and install it locally from within the program. Instead, you have to give the software your Cedega account details, and it downloads the engine for you.

So make a bzipped tar backup of your working cedega install and stop worrying about it. Though you are better off just not paying them for anything and discarding their product. Wine is more useful, Cross Over if you need paid support or a nifty gui.