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?
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.
Microsoft knows that if they start tampering with that they will get into all kind of shit antitrust wise. Proton is a pretty small project from their perspective, so it’s really not worth the risk and/or public backlash.
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.
There are techniques to insulate the codebase. For example, you can have one person read the actual leaked code, explain the data structures and algorithms at a high level to a developer, then have the developer implement that logic themselves based only on what they understood from the explanation. I believe this is known as clean-room reverse engineering.
Not really. It’s basically the same as Google vs SCO. There it was Java libraries instead of Win32, but the principle is the same.
What Microsoft is already doing that hurts Linux gaming is selling software exclusively over the Windows store. It has some awful DRM that nobody has bothered to take on yet. That’s why the Windows version of Minecraft Bedrock Edition or the Gamepass app don’t run on Linux.
Not really. It’s basically the same as Google vs SCO. There it was Java libraries instead of Win32, but the principle is the same.
To give a bit more context: The outcome of that lawsuit was that APIs are not copyrightable in the US.
That’s relevant here, because WINE does implement the Windows API. It would infringe Microsoft’s copyright, if the API itself was copyrightable.
The outcome of that lawsuit was that APIs are not copyrightable
Not quite. The ultimate decision was that APIs are copyrightable, but that Google’s use of the copyrighted material was Fair Use.
It would not be unreasonable to suppose that as a matter of precedent, any reimplantation of an API is likely to be Fair Use, but because Fair Use is such a case-by-case thing there may be wiggle room in that.
How much appetite does Microsoft have for litigation? The Linux community is nothing if not stubborn, and they won’t take this lying down. You’ll definitely have the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation involved and they’ll fight it all the way to the Supreme Court.
Hmm, you know, I even looked that up before posting, so I wouldn’t be writing nonsense: https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/05/non-apocalypse-apis-copyright-fair-use/
But yeah, it would be weird for a court to make such a wide-reaching decision, if it doesn’t have to. So, that source probably oversimplified that it’s ‘merely’ an important precedent case…
The Wine and Proton devs claim that all of the code has been reverse engineered and written from scratch to simply be compatible with the Windows APIs. Unless that claim is false, or Microsoft has a patent over any systems they are recreating (which is unlikely), there’s nothing Microsoft can do legally. If they did have a patent, getting around it probably wouldn’t be too hard.
And even if they did, it could only really stop Steam from officially distributing it. There are already people like GloriousEggroll making their own versions of Proton, so realistically it’d probably just become some sort of unofficial underground thing that you can still get from anywhere I’d assume.
Wine is legal. Emulation is legal. (Yes I know WINE is not an emulator you can shut up now)
If MS could take down WINE, they’d have done it long ago. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to and won’t constantly look for ways to do it.
