Winetricks may be inciting copyright infringement
Hello,
Winetricks [1] is a package for easily installing many programs and libraries
into Wine. It is quite popular with Wine users.
Among many programs, it allows installing IE 6, IE7, IE8, all versions of .NET
from 1.1 to 4.5 and some parts of DirectX.
Unfortunately, many libraries that it distributes are illegal to install on
Linux or it is legal to install them under limited circumstances (such as
having a Windows license).
Winetricks does not tell the user which programs and libraries require a
Windows license and which may be problematic or downright illegal to use. Some
programs pull in additional dependencies, so it is difficult to determine what
is being installed other then by analyzing the source code of Winetricks,
which defeats its whole purpose.
For example the license terms for .NET 2.0 (which gets installed also when we
install .NET 3.0) contain such a statement:
"MICROSOFT SOFTWARE SUPPLEMENTAL LICENSE TERMS
MICROSOFT .NET FRAMEWORK 2.0
Microsoft Corporation (or based on where you live, one of its affiliates)
licenses this supplement to you. If you are licensed to use Microsoft Windows
operating system software (the “software”), you may use this supplement. You
may not use it if you do not have a license for the software. You may use a
copy of this supplement with each validly licensed copy of the software."
The last sentence may be understood as forbidding use of .NET 2.0 on other
operating systems then Windows.
[1] https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/winetricks
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Greetings,
Mateusz Jończyk
AEI, Informatyka, Semestr 3 Magisterskich, BDiIS
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