this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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At what point does Microsoft start suing over patents?
As far as I know, Microsoft has no patents related to linux and how it can run Windows games. Everything has been reimplemented from scratch on the linux side, there's no shared IP or patented techniques being used.
They likely have patents on a number of things implemented in Wine/Proton. Clean-room implementation is also good, buy would cover copyright, not patent.
WINE stands for “WINE Is Not an Emulator”; they’re not reimplementing Microsoft libraries. No patents to violate.
That's not how it works, but ok
What patents?
I don't have a list. Just considering that MS patents EVERYTHING I have a tough time believing they don't have patents over at least SOME DirectX things that Wine has created an implementation for, etc.
WINE doesn’t need to implement anything that DirectX does, it just needs to translate those calls into the equivalent Linux ones. Linux does all the actual work; and if Microsoft had a patent for “drawing pixels on a screen” they’d have shown that hand by now.
Sure, but patents cover methods and implementations. If Wine gets a cleanroom spec that says "when you put in these values, we need these pixels out" then they are free to write their own implementation not covered by the patent.
2003
I'm not sure if they really have standing for that.
But even if they did, Microsoft don't have the guts because cracking down it would be akin to a direct attack on Valve and Steam. And at this point I think we can all agree that Microsoft needs Steam more than Valve needs Windows.
Right, they clearly don't believe it has been worth the effort in the past. At a certain point I've always worried that they might.