Microsoft has confirmed suspicions that it was targeting WINE (recursive acronym for “Wine Is Not an Emulator). WINE is a compatibility layer that tricks Windows applications into thinking they are running on Windows when in fact they are running on Linux or Unix. In their new Windows update tool, Microsoft specifically looks for the presence of WINE elements and generates an error message if it finds them. They (Microsoft) may be within their rights to block access to Windows updates to machines not running Windows, but if they start blocking people from other updates, (like MS Office) then it is likely to become an issue of sorts in the community. The WINE folks don’t seem miffed at all, in fact looking at their site, it gives the impression that they are happy about it because it shows that Microsoft views them as a threat. Read the full story here.

This article was posted on Saturday, February 26th, 2005 at 7:56 pm