Codeweavers offer their software free today

http://down.codeweavers.com/

by mark_ellul • 18 years ago

60 23 18 years ago

down.codeweavers.com

mechanical_fish• 18 years ago

Main site has melted down due to traffic. Here's an article talking about what's going on:

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/10/27/codeweavers-says-cheap-gas-fr...

nocivus• 18 years ago

Seems to be up. Just downloaded both and requested a serial number.

mdasen• 18 years ago

Since the site is down, can anyone explain the differences between the "Games" and "Pro" editions?

qqq• 18 years ago

games is 2 megabytes larger. it must be better!

just get both, their fault for bad UI.

sdfx• 18 years ago

according to TUAW:

"Word from CodeWeavers execs is that the free license will be for a download-only flavor of the Pro version (!), including the Games optimized build and the option to share a Windows 'bottle' among multiple users on the same machine."

bouncingsoul• 18 years ago

Games came out later. If I remember correctly it was released as more of a stop-gap version to get games-specific fixes out sooner than the regular release cycle.

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrossOver):

* The difference with regular CrossOver is that CrossOver Games will have a shorter release cycle in order to update faster to the latest work on Wine than with regular CrossOver, which targets stability and reliability.

* Crossover Mac was divided into Standard and Pro versions like Crossover Linux. The standard version includes 6 months of support and upgrades, while the Pro version includes 1 year of support and upgrades and a free copy of Crossover Games.

nostrademons4• 18 years ago

Entrepreneurs, take note: here's how to promote a product. I'd never heard of Codeweavers before this. Imagine all the Digg & newsmedia coverage they're getting.

dustineichler• 18 years ago

Good point, I've never heard of them before either but will likely use if not try what they're offering.

The benefits of this community are awesome btw... is love.

henning2• 18 years ago

How much revenue will it ultimately translate into?

nostrademons4• 18 years ago

I have no idea. But say they get 1,000,000 visitors from this stunt, none of whom had ever heard of CodeWeavers before and none of whom will ever pay for another CodeWeavers product again (the folks who read Digg/Reddit/blogs tend not to pay for software ;-)). Then say that each of them tells 5 other people - that seems reasonable based on who I've told, and amounts to 5M people who know about CodeWeavers and didn't before. Then assume a 1% conversion rate. That's 50,000 new customers, and at $40/copy, $2M in additional revenue. Not bad for a publicity stunt.

babul2• 18 years ago

I never heard of them or the product either until Bob Lee twittered about it http://twitter.com/crazybob/status/978195842 17hrs ago.

I told my friend shortly thereafter (sorry, should have also submitted it to HN in hindsight), who then looked at the site and product features/comparison and costs(http://www.codeweavers.com/products/differences/), and for the last several hours has been building up a huge repository of serials.

Asking him what he intends to do with all the licenses, he replied "they come with full technical support from the company, so I will ebay each for $1, build up a fantastic ebay profile to market my other products and make $$$".

Most of this is done automatically, from harvesting the serials to automated auction listing and delivery, but none the less it seems extreme to me.

BUT, I guess, that is what being opportunistic and exploiting all the verticals is about. :-/

minsight• 18 years ago

you need new friends.

bad_user• 18 years ago

When you're running Linux as your desktop, it's impossible to not hear about them.

Their product is based on Wine, which is a pretty decent emulation of the Windows APIs, but it is a bitch to setup properly, so you start looking around for more professional solutions.

CodeWeavers, besides their own contributions to Wine, have the advantage that they test their setup against popular software.

tom_rath• 18 years ago

You can do this sort of thing regularly through sites like giveawayoftheday.com

Long-term results are mixed and (as henning notes) this sort of stunt does not attract the type of customer a business wants (that is, those willing to spend money on quality software).

Bogging down your support staff with a bunch of cheapskates looking for freebies can increase costs while doing squat for revenue, all while seriously cheezing off those of your customers who actually paid for your product.

If you're new and you're desperate, go for it. Otherwise, you might want to consider a different advertising strategy.

nostrademons4• 18 years ago

This is more than just a giveaway, though, because:

1.) He tied it in with the current presidential election

2.) He framed it as a challenge with a lot of chutzah (really, running CodeWeaver is nowhere near as complicated as running the U.S.)

3.) The reason he "lost" has to do with a current event (the economic crisis) that has nothing to do with the original challenge (Bush didn't lower gas prices, the crude market did).

4.) The press release had a funny, irreverent tone.

That seems tailor-made for a viral story. It's not that they were giving things away, it was that they were giving things away and relating them to current events in an offbeat way.

LogicHoleFlaw• 18 years ago

I have a favorite game which has very poor support under Wine. The CodeWeavers product may very well do a better job with it. If so, I can switch my personal box full-time to Linux. That would make me very happy.

iamdave• 18 years ago

I'm still on the fence about CodeWeavers. A few great points have been made about the software which makes Windows emulation much, much easier but at the same time, their original code base came entirely from Wine; there's no GPL requirement to make it free, I kinda take the idea of using free code for profit as kind of a tightwad move.

But, they're free to do what they want with it, and this was not a bad move to at least give back to those who really jumped on the chance.

Zev• 18 years ago

Codeweavers contributes a lot of code back to the community (ie: Wine's git tree) - and a few of the main Wine hackers are employed by Codeweavers (Alexandre and Jeremy at least).

Codeweavers offer their software free today

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