- Wabi (software)
Infobox Software
name = Wabi
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developer =Sun Microsystems
status = Unmaintained
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operating_system = Solaris, Linux
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website =Wabi was a commercial product from
Sun Microsystems that implemented theMicrosoft Windows Win16 API specification on Solaris; a version for Linux was also released byCaldera Systems . Wabi supported running applications developed forWindows 3.1 , Windows 3.11, and Windows for Workgroups.When the technology was originally discussed in the early 1990s, it was implied that Wabi stood for "Windows Application Binary Interface", but before its release Sun declared that it was not an
acronym .Wabi required a Windows 3.x installation in order to work, meaning that it would also require a Windows license, unlike efforts that endeavor to implement the entire Windows API such as Wine.
In conjunction with Wabi, Sun initiated an effort to create an
ISO standard, non-proprietary definition of the Windows API. ThePublic Windows Initiative (PWI) was intended to define a publicly available standard that would help Sun and other companies that wished to clone the Microsoft Windows programming interface (like Willows' TWIN [ [http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/1232 Linux Journal: "The Desktop War"] ] another GPL'd implementation of the API [ [http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/may97/0597.html Willows TWIN libraries are GPL] ] ), but even when Sun alleged there was no intellectual property breach, this effort was shot down in 1996 by Microsoft. [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CGN/is_1999_May_7/ai_54580586 Sun Uses ECMA as Path to ISO Java Standardization] (Computergram International)]Wabi 2.2B was licensed by Caldera to allow its users to run Windows applications under
Linux , [ [http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2076 Wabi: Caldera's Solution for Windows Applications] ] together with the also licensed DOS Merge.Wabi development was discontinued in December 1997.
References
External links
* [http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/802-6306 Wabi 2.2 User's Guide]
* [http://everythinglinux.org/wabi/wabi_content.html Review of Wabi 2.2 for Linux by Caldera]
* [http://linux.dn.ua/docs/wabi/wabi.html Wabi for Linux User's Guide]
* A 1998 [http://www.heise.de/ct/english/98/10/166/ comparison] between Caldera's Wabi 2.2B, Wine and Willows Twin Libraries
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