API要不受法律保护了

In addition to providing a portable C++ programming environment for GPUs, HIP is designed to ease the porting of existing CUDA code into the HIP environment. This section describes the available tools and provides practical suggestions on how to port CUDA code and work through common issues. [link] AMD这么干，NVidia为啥不吱声？

IBM, Microsoft and other tech companies have filed court documents in support of Google ahead of the Supreme Court of the US hearing over whether copyright applies to software application programming interfaces. [zdnet]

In the era of Windows XP and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft used its anti-piracy Windows Genuine Advantage program to block updates to Wine users on Linux systems. Back then, Microsoft's top echelons refused to publicly recognize the existence of Wine.

But in today's tech world of cloud computing, interoperable systems, and receding desktop sales, Microsoft has come out as a supporter of the techniques Wine developers used to make Windows software compatible with Linux machines. Microsoft last week filed an amicus curiae [friend of court, 法庭之友] brief [简报] in support of Google's position against Oracle's claim that software application programming interfaces (APIs) can be copyrighted. Google's case in the US Supreme Court is scheduled for March. [zdnet]

看来Wine可以放心用了。

Wine (recursive backronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator) is a free and open-source compatibility layer that aims to allow application software and computer games developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as "Winelib", against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like systems.

Wine is predominantly written using black-box testing reverse-engineering, to avoid copyright issues.

Bob Amstadt, the initial project leader, and Eric Youngdale started the Wine project in 1993 as a way to run Windows applications on Linux. It was inspired by two Sun Microsystems' products, the Wabi for the Solaris operating system, and the Public Windows Initiative, which was an attempt to get the Windows API fully reimplemented in the public domain as an ISO standard but rejected due to pressure from Microsoft in 1996.

The main corporate sponsor of Wine is CodeWeavers, which employs Julliard and many other Wine developers to work on Wine and on CrossOver, CodeWeavers' supported version of Wine. CrossOver includes some application-specific tweaks not considered suitable for the upstream version, as well as some additional proprietary components.

The involvement of Corel for a time assisted the project, chiefly by employing Julliard and others to work on it. Corel had an interest in porting WordPerfect Office, its office suite, to Linux (especially Corel Linux). Corel later cancelled all Linux-related projects after Microsoft made major investments in Corel, stopping their Wine effort.

Other corporate sponsors include Google, which hired CodeWeavers to fix Wine so Picasa ran well enough to be ported directly to Linux using the same binary as on Windows; Google later paid for improvements to Wine's support for Adobe Photoshop CS2. Wine is also a regular beneficiary of Google's Summer of Code program.

Photoshop CS2和Picasa都很老了。

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Microsoft has not made public statements about Wine. However, the Windows Update software will block updates to Microsoft applications running in Wine. On 16 February 2005, Ivan Leo Puoti discovered that Microsoft had started checking the Windows Registry for the Wine configuration key and would block the Windows Update for any component. As Puoti noted: "It's also the first time Microsoft acknowledges the existence of Wine."

In January 2020, Microsoft cited Wine as a positive consequence of being able to reimplement APIs, in its amicus curiae brief for Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.

LLC = Limited Liability Company.

Inc. is an abbreviation for Incorporated when it is used after a company's name.

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