Bristol Submits: Brings Windows Applications to Linux - Company Business and Marketing

ENT, Jan 12, 2000

After winning a decision against Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com) over restrictions on access to Windows source code, but receiving meaningless restitution, Bristol signed the refuted contract and has released an updated Wind/U product that ports Windows applications to the Linux platform.

Bristol Technology's (www.bristol.com) Wind/U is a set of cross-platform development tools and a porting center for moving Microsoft Windows applications to various Unix flavors.

Wind/U for Linux lets developers compile Microsoft Win32 API and Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) source code directly on Linux and create native desktop and server-based Linux applications. Wind/U for Linux includes support for Windows technologies such as MFC 6 and COM. Bristol is also providing ports of the RogueWave Stingray Visual C components on Linux for use with Wind/U.

The Linux Porting Center will help companies determine the effort required to port applications to Linux. It offers expertise in Wind/U porting and native Linux development, and provides hands-on training in Linux development.

The release comes a few months after a protracted battle between the company and Microsoft. During a trial in the summer of 1999, Bristol accused Microsoft of unfair practices by raising the price of access to Microsoft's Windows Interface Source Environment (WISE), the clearinghouse for much of the Windows API source code necessary to develop Wind/U's porting technology.

Microsoft countered with the argument that Bristol rival Mainsoft Corp. (www.mainsoft.com) produced similar software and had signed the same agreement Microsoft had offered Bristol. Bristol won the judgement, but was awarded a token settlement of $1. Since that time, Bristol signed the same agreement with Microsoft that Mainsoft did.