TiempoLibre Archives
Jeremy White is not only the CEO of CodeWeavers. Behind his professional role there is also a private life made of family, passions and daily commitments. In this interview, he talks about the birth of CrossOver, the relationship with the Wine project, the company’s philosophy and the future of CodeWeavers.
Jeremy, you are not only the CEO of CodeWeavers: you also have a private life. How do you spend your free time?
I’m 41, married, and I have two boys, aged 10 and 13. I spend most of my free time with my family.
I also volunteer as a coach for my son’s school chess club, which is why I’m never in the office on Friday afternoons. I volunteer with Cub Scouts as well, and then we all get on our Wii and play Mario Kart Wii together — although my oldest son now consistently beats both my wife and me.
When and how did the idea for CrossOver, originally CrossOver Office, come about?
We launched CrossOver Office in April 2002 as an act of complete desperation. Our initial round of investment capital had run out and, as it turned out, 2001 was not exactly “the year of the Linux Desktop”. We had also parted ways with Lindows, which left us with only a small amount of income.
At the time, our greatest joy came from selling a small product called CrossOver Plugin. So we thought: since we can now run Office 2000, why not try to turn it into a product?
That is how CrossOver Office was born. Fortunately, it has supported us and our work on Wine ever since.
Did the birth and growth of OpenOffice change your mission?
No, not at all. We see that as a positive thing. We like Free Software, and we are happy when people are able to choose OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office.
For me, it is all about choice. I want to give people more choices, not fewer. I like people being able to choose Mac or Linux without having to worry about whether their favorite Windows applications will work.
Is that also why you developed other products such as CrossOver Pro Linux, CrossOver Pro Mac, CrossOver Games for Linux and CrossOver Games for Mac?
Yes, absolutely. We are trying to help as many people as we can.
Which software has been the most successful among your customers?
We do very well with Microsoft Office and games. We also bring a lot of value to users of applications such as Quicken, Project, Visio and the other programs we officially support.
Beyond that, however, there is a wide range of applications that simply work. To be honest, I think our customers get more overall satisfaction from unsupported applications than they do from the officially supported ones.
Why did you call your software “CrossOver” and your company “CodeWeavers”?
CodeWeavers came first. That was the name of the company when I founded it in 1996.
We could not call the company CrossOver because the domain crossover.com was already taken and too expensive to buy. There were also other issues. But we thought “CrossOver Office” was a very nice name for what we did, so we went with it.
We have thought about renaming the company, and perhaps the products too, so that everything would match. But at this point, we believe CrossOver is too valuable a name to change.
Your software is based on the Wine Project, which is open source. Why does CrossOver not use a GNU/GPL licence?
The heart and soul of CrossOver is Wine. All of our hard work goes into Wine, and Wine is licensed under the LGPL.
The small part that is not Wine remains proprietary, mostly as a way to encourage people to support our efforts.
How long will it take to support Microsoft Office 2007?
It should happen very soon — hopefully only a few weeks away.
Can you tell us something about CodeWeavers’ future projects?
Our goal is to run every Windows application. The path to achieving that is still quite long, though.
How many people work for CodeWeavers?
We have about 23 people around the world.
Your project has become very popular. Did you expect this level of recognition?
When I was young, I never dreamed of doing something this important. I am constantly honored and flattered by all the support and attention we have received.
Of course, there are days when I think people should pay even more attention to us. But then I remember that being interviewed by people from Italy is really a remarkable honor.
Would you like to say something to the Italian audience of TiempoLibreSite.com?
I wish them all the best, and I hope they enjoy Wine very much.
Cheers,
Jeremy