June 17: Firefox 3.0 and Wine 1.0!

In case you’ve missed the announcement, Firefox 3 is due on Tuesday [update: at 10AM Pacific].  Its a big deal, but I worry that it will almost completely overshadow the fact that so is Wine 1.0! Wine was first released (version 0.0.1) in July 1993 and didn’t reach beta (version 0.9) until October 2005 (yes, TWELVE YEARS IN ALPHA!)  Despite what the ReleasePlan page says at the top, Wine 1.0 appears to actually be due on June 20. [update: GRRRR!  They actually did release on the 17th!]

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Friends, vintners, penguins, lend me your ears:

We come not to praise Windows, but to celebrate our increasing independence from it.

The final release candidate for Wine 1.0 will appear this Friday [June 13], and barring catastrophe, Wine 1.0 itself will be released a few days later.

To those of you whose favorite bug was not fixed, we offer our apologies; time was limited.

We expect to do a 1.0.1 release at some point (1-2 months?) with a few important and conservative bugfixes.
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What I would really like to see in the coming months is FF3 being preloaded onto OEM computers and Proprietary software manufacturers testing against Wine.

Wine to reach version 1.0 by summer? :)

I note (via Issue 341 of the Wine Weekly Newsletter) that there are currently about 100 bugs blocking Wine 1.0 and that, maybe just maybe, they might get resolved by the summer…

Considering that the project was in alpha for twelve years (1993-2005), three in beta wouldn’t be so bad ;)

When Wine finally does reach 1.0 status, I really hope that there is a push for companies to release Windows software that’s also been tested against it. Open source stuff is easily ported, but the in-demand proprietary programs (e.g. games, Photoshop, etc.) bolster the Windows monopoly. If a generic Windows app can be run just as easily on OS X or Linux as Windows at little to no additional cost to the company, why *wouldn’t* they want those additional potential buyers? :)

Update March 21: Indeed, it looks like June! :-)