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PayPalIt seems things aren't all rosy between CodeWeavers and DXVK, as developer Henri Verbeet has written into the Wine Development mailing list to give more details.
The developers working on Wine seem to be going their own way with their Vulkan plans and most thought this was due to DXVK being written in C++, a different license and so on. Apparently, that's not the main issue as Verbeet notes and they didn't pull any punches:
In February 2018, we reached out to Philip Rebohle—the author of DXVK—to start a conversation around whether there were any areas we could cooperate on. One obvious area was the vkd3d shader compiler, which translates Direct3D shader byte code to SPIR-V (much like DXVK has to do), but there would have been other possibilities, like sharing the DXGI implementation, or using a scheme like vkd3d where Wine's d3d11 could have optionally loaded DXVK as a regular shared library. That e-mail went unanswered. Now, I appreciate that different people have different ideas about what's acceptable and what isn't, but personally I think that's extremely rude and uncivilised.
They continued:
Nevertheless, e-mail gets lost sometimes, sometimes people are busy, everyone gets a second chance. So a few months later, since I was organising WineConf 2018, I sent Philip a personal invitation to attend WineConf, and perhaps discuss things there. That invitation went unanswered too, at which point I was pretty much done with DXVK.
It is my understanding that since then both Jeremy White and CodeWeavers' partners at Valve have tried reaching out to Philip on the subject, but evidently with little success.
Personally, this all feels like it's getting a little too heated for me. Still, it shows that there's clearly some communication issues that need to be solved between all parties involved for the better of us all who use Wine, DXVK and so on.
Hopefully the situation can be resolved in an amicable way, calling someone out in such a way doesn't seem particularly fair though. I've picked up on emails months after they were sent before, it's very common when you're busy and working alone. I did speak to Philip Rebohle after this, who said they would rather stay out of "unnecessary drama in public".
The good news, is that they are working on an official wined3d Vulkan backend going by a codename of Damavand which will be interesting to see.
You can see the mailing list entry here.
Cheers, Phoronix.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
qptain Nemo 25 Jan 2019
I absolutely don't mind there being two competing implementations, and I have no doubt that not everybody in the wine project shares this rationale and sentiment, but this is really silly.
CodeWeavers emailed me a while ago out of the blue to thank me for my coverage of Proton. I emailed them to ask for an interview, they didn't reply. A week later one of them is on a podcast with BoilingSteam.
I didn't get salty about it, it's just the way it is. It's why I find the situation so bemusing. Emails don't get answered all the time.
Best of my wishes to both projects and their maintainers, it's still astonishing how the Linux gaming world has changed last year...
Edit: I realize that my posting could be read differently than I meant it to be. Clarified that my point was about the news articles itself.
Last edited by jens on 25 Jan 2019 at 6:15 pm UTC
I get that a posting like this on the wine mailing list is welcome feast for sites like phoronix or here, though I very much doubt that taking this into public and the obviously following speculations will do any good.
Well, it's better to take this public, to resolve whatever blockers they have, than just to abandon all collaboration. Not sure if Henri tried other means of resolving it, before resorting to such measures.
Last edited by Shmerl on 25 Jan 2019 at 5:37 pm UTC
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/ajq4fr/more_details_on_the_wined3d_vulkan_plans_why_dxvk/eexumzp/
I hated using WINE as-is. Had to install an Ubuntu PPA, tinker with winetricks and playonlinux, and hope it would boot. Proton in Steam just works and the installs of any game I want is painless.
Last edited by t3g on 25 Jan 2019 at 5:57 pm UTC
Write something controversial on a public mailing list.
Have "news"-articles about it on websites we know the other person frequents.
Congratulations, you have now successfully established communications. :D
Here's some extra perspective for you.
CodeWeavers emailed me a while ago out of the blue to thank me for my coverage of Proton. I emailed them to ask for an interview, they didn't reply. A week later one of them is on a podcast with BoilingSteam.
I didn't get salty about it, it's just the way it is. It's why I find the situation so bemusing. Emails don't get answered all the time.
Interesting. On the other hand, in my profession, that would be unacceptable. I'm required to read and respond to all emails within 24 hours. I'm blue collar too, and work out of a car, so I would have to stop what I'm doing in the field, drive to an office and log on.
You have no idea how awesome it was when get finally got email access on our car computers (and our personal phones)! I imagine I get far fewer emails, 50 ish a day, than you guys.
benjamimgois 25 Jan 2019
Mohandevir 25 Jan 2019
While opensource is fighting it self, closed source OS like Windows and OSX concentrate efforts in what really matter.
Please define what really matters... Personally I still see the OpenSource having an edge in that department. Isn't 70% of cloud based services and servers running on OpenSource?
Last edited by Mohandevir on 25 Jan 2019 at 6:36 pm UTC
Saddly this is not new in the opensource realm. Duplicated efforts due to Gigantic egos always generate duplicated / triplicated efforts. This is the same old DEB x RPM, KDE x Gnome, upstart x systemv , Snap x Flatpak.... While opensource is fighting it self, closed source OS like Windows and OSX concentrate efforts in what really matter.
I take it you've never worked inside a large company. Duplication, pet projects galore. And corporate politics gets involved, and even so, gigantic egos too. At least in /traditional/ open source development, you can actually compete openly on technical grounds. In companies, it's possible to cover up ineptitude. So it's not a problem really about being open source as it is simply mismanagement.
TheRiddick 25 Jan 2019
Last edited by TheRiddick on 25 Jan 2019 at 8:47 pm UTC
TheRiddick 25 Jan 2019
It is a open source project btw, not sure what exactly the wine devs were expecting, a rolled out red carpet? Just fcken do it! if they think they can improve something.
This is a very one-sided argument right now and we really have no idea what is actually going on, we have the words of one person.Frankly, I have to question why you published this article given those very same arguments.
Did you try reaching out to Philip for comment?
TheRiddick 25 Jan 2019
...do you expect wine devs to roll out a red carpet instead?
I don't think Philip was trying to make contact :)
Last edited by TheRiddick on 25 Jan 2019 at 9:44 pm UTC
We are a news site.This is a very one-sided argument right now and we really have no idea what is actually going on, we have the words of one person.Frankly, I have to question why you published this article given those very same arguments.
Did you try reaching out to Philip for comment?
We publish news and interesting happenings about major projects.
It's not difficult to understand why. Many people have wondered ever since DXVK was created, if it would become part of Wine and this is some kind of insight into the happenings from one side.
Edit: And yes, I did try to speak to him first and he stayed out of it.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 25 Jan 2019 at 11:04 pm UTC
I wish that's all it was, the wording was very harsh though....do you expect wine devs to roll out a red carpet instead?
I don't think Philip was trying to make contact :)
Indeed, it was wine devs who wanted to talk about converging their efforts (not just merging dxvk, if I understand correctly). No response, and....that's all the news there is.
I think that's really all Henri was trying to say that as a statement, nothing more, as an explanation of where things are with regards to wine and dxvk. That's how I read it anyway. There was no mention of any expectations.
Whole thing is being stirred up over essentially nothing. But, the Internet I guess.
This is a very one-sided argument right now and we really have no idea what is actually going on, we have the words of one person.Frankly, I have to question why you published this article given those very same arguments.
Did you try reaching out to Philip for comment?
What makes you think he'd respond even if Liam had? He clearly doesn't check his email. :P
Avehicle7887 25 Jan 2019
There's no need to put pressure. I don't claim to know Philip, but if you look at his github he's very often responding to issues and helping people and that says enough for me.
I for one am grateful for all the work he's done and wish to see DXVK getting better, regardless if it's part of upstream Wine or as a separate addon.
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