Cedega (software)
Cedega is a proprietary software that allows you to run Windows games on Linux.
The software is developed by the company " TransGaming Technologies ". The aim of the project is to develop a compatibility layer that is specifically tailored to the games interface DirectX from Microsoft and is therefore particularly true should be suitable to perform DirectX games.
The project, originally " winex " was based on Wine and will be further developed since 2002, irrespective of the Wine project and was renamed in June 2004 in " Cedega ".
End of February 2011, the " Cedega Gaming Service" was set in its form as a software subscription. Cedega is now available free of charge via the GameTree Linux Developer Program.
Licenses
Although Cedega was mainly proprietary software, TransGaming made a part of the source code under different licenses via CVS publicly. Because of these licenses Cedega was not free software, despite the freely available source code. Current CVS version was previously used as a kind of demo. However, since the compilation is not easy and not always without problems, TransGaming has temporarily offered a real demo version that is no longer available, however. For some time were demo versions of current games offered regularly on Cedega, which Cedega could also be tested without a license.
Some Linux distributions, including Debian GNU / Linux and Gentoo Linux wanted also supply packages of CVS version of Cedega with their distributions. To prevent this, TransGaming threatened to exacerbate the licenses even further.
Costs
The acquisition costs were based on length of subscription between 25 and 45 euros and varied according to whether they wanted to also get an installation CD with the current Cedega version in addition to a license or not. You created a free account with the acquired license. With this account, you could log on the website of TransGaming and had access to an enclosed area. During the term of the subscription, the latest version or updates could be watched at any time and without restrictions Download of Cedega.
For direct purchase from the website of the American manufacturer was only a small selection of payment options ( primarily credit card). For many of those interested in the German-speaking, therefore, one of the German reseller offered.
When buying from the manufacturer, they purchased a subscription that included a minimum entitled to three months updates of Cedega. When buying through dealers and other accounting models were (eg single purchase) possible. After the expiry of the subscription you could get any updates from Cedega more. Previously installed versions of Cedega could still be used without any restrictions even after the subscription expires.
Criticism
TransGaming used the source code of Wine as a basis for Cedega. Cedega but was released as proprietary software and so no developments flowed back to the Wine project. TransGaming this was made possible by the fact that Wine earlier still under the X11-/MIT-Lizenz that contains no copyleft and therefore is a Permissive open source license. TransGaming said that these restrictions are necessary because Cedega contains among other code licensed to perform provided with a copy protection games.
The developers of Wine responded with the fact that they changed the license of Wine in the LGPL. This means that anyone who published a modified version of Wine must also make the source code under a compatible license to LGPL. Therefore, recent improvements in Wine can now no longer be included in Cedega, so that is often claimed that newer versions of Wine for some games work again significantly better than Cedega. However, Cedega is independently developed and adapted to newer games.
Setting
After the license of Wine was amended in March 2002 by the MIT license to LGPL, the development of Cedega, it became very problematic. For years the code base of Cedega was only rudimentary patched instead of being further developed. In addition, with the proliferation of DirectX 10 compatibility of Cedega against modern DirectX games dropped increasingly, as it did not support the current version of the collection of proprietary Microsoft programming interface.
With CrossOver Games since 2008, there are also a direct competitor product that is based on a recent Wine version and avoids the criticisms of Cedega.
Since the development was no longer profitable as a customer- centered product, the subscription service end of February 2011 has been set. Cedega is now to be further developed through a developer program with support from the publisher and will be available via the GameTree Linux Developer Program for customers free of charge.