It is interesting that wine is “wine is not a simulator”. It has an interesting history.
The original author wanted to call it winemu at first, but he didn’t like it. He shortened it to “Khamr”, and reminded him of “weeping” and “neighing.” He liked the “wine”, but it was too long, it became “wine”.
The first suggestion for “Wine is not Emulator” was in 1993, when there were concerns that Microsoft might have objections to a trademark for “Windows Emulator”. Nobody takes this name seriously.
It was not modified until 1997, as a replacement. At the end of 1997, FAQ about wine
> Wine stands for one of two things: WINdows Emulator, or Wine Is Not Emulator. Both are correct. Use whichever you prefer.
The switch to not being mentioned as a Windows emulator happened later. 981108 release notes mentioned
> This is version 981108 of Wine, an MS Windows emulator.
I stood 981211
> This is version 981211 of Wine, a free application for Windows on Unix.
As far as I can tell from old Usenet posts, there were two reasons why they stopped mentioning it as an emulator.
1. It can be used for more than just running Windows binaries under Unix. If you have the source code for a Windows program, you can compile it on Unix and link it to Wine to get a port for the Windows program. Wine is now a Windows compatible system that was more than just an emulator. It was an emulator and port library.
2. Computers became fast enough that people started using hardware emulators to do things like run game software from old consoles or old PCs. These simulators weren’t very fast. This may make users think that the emulator is inherently slow, which may prevent them from trying Wine, under the false assumption that it will also be slow.
When Wine is used to run Windows binaries rather than as a library on transfer, it’s actually still an emulator, just like Bob Amstadt first wrote it. Nothing technically changed when adding the back name or changing the text for the 981211 release notes.
But now a lot of people have only seen the back name, and the only emulators they used that called themselves emulators were hardware emulators, so they would insist that something was just an emulator if it was emulating hardware.
(Translator. The original text was written in English by one ‘tzs’ on 01-19-2022.)
