So in a CodeWeavers management meeting one day, we were looking for a way to show off
Wine's new maturity, particularly for porting applications. What we needed was a freely redistributable application; one that didn't exist on Mac or Linux, but one that was readily understandable. We thought about Firefox; that was perfect, but sadly, there were Mac and Linux builds.
And then a little bird flew in the Window and chirped
'Chromium', and we knew we had it.
So on Thursday, September 4th, I called a company Fire Drill. I said I wanted to ship ported versions of Chromium for Mac and Linux, and I wanted to do it as fast as possible. By Friday, we had a first working build. But it had a major problem - you couldn't do https sites, so logging in to Gmail, for example, was right out. Unfortunately, supporting that required that we finish the implementation of a nearly brand new DLL in Wine - the winhttp dll. Luckily for us, Hans Leiddeker had recently joined CodeWeavers, and in a bit of a hazing ritual, we asked him to scramble madly to implement what we needed. A little more than a week later, and he had done it. Of course, there were many other people who pitched in and tuned Wine to make Chromium just that much nicer.
So today I am pleased to announce that we have shipped
freely available versions of Chromium for both the Mac and Linux. Not only does this give Mac and Linux users a chance to see what all the hype is about, it also lets the world see just how far Wine has come and how powerful it truly can be. In just 11 days, we were able to bring a modern Windows application across to Mac and Linux. Imagine what
we can do for you.
Frankly, it's events like this that remind me just what a joy it is to work with everyone at CodeWeavers, and with the broader Wine community. One of the greatest joys in life is to do meaningful work, and to get to do it with such fantastic people is an added bonus. I'm looking forward to our
annual party in a few weeks.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy White