CodeWeavers Now Controlled By An Employee Ownership Trust

After leading CodeWeavers for 27 years, Jeremy White has decided to leave the company, prompting the transition to an employee ownership trust. CodeWeavers is known for its CrossOver software and contributions to the Wine project. Phoronix reports: CodeWeavers' President James Ramey is now taking on the CEO role while Director of Development Ulrich Czekalla in turn is stepping up to fill the President role. Jeremy White does continue to serve as Chairman of the Board at CodeWeavers. In addition to selling the CrossOver software, CodeWeavers' PortJump effort aides organizations in porting apps/games to macOS, Linux, or ChromeOS. CodeWeavers also engages in technical consulting services for organizations. Among CodeWeavers' clients is Valve in assisting them with their Steam Play / Proton effort. You can read more about the changes via the CodeWeavers blog.

Re:Literal who

[DamnOregonian]

The most important name in gaming on Linux, among other things.
I've been giving these folks my money for over a decade as thanks for the great work they do in pushing Wine ever forward.

If you've ever used Wine, or gamed on Linux, you have these guys to thank.
Note: Not to in any way diminish the work of the non-CodeWeavers Wine developers. CodeWeaver's support model has just allowed for highly focused improvements to the code base that we have benefited greatly from.

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[93 Escort Wagon]

Amen to that from another Codeweavers supporter!

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[sg_oneill]

I cant say I've ever been THAT loyal, but its a fine product, and I currently have a subscription on my mac because the thing just works so well, all things considered.

The fact that I get *higher* FPS on my M1 max mac pro for Dwarf Fortress (which is CPU rather than GPU bound for performance) than on my fire breathing Ryzen 9/3080 says something to ther stability and effectiveness of the product.

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[DamnOregonian]

My "fire breather" is a mobile i9 with a 3080 (also mobile), but ya, there are times where the M1 Max MBP, running x86 shit on crossover- itself a syscall translator- actually outperforms it, and it's a huge "wtf"

Crossover for Mac is pretty amazing. Not least because it can run 32-bit apps on a CPU that literally doesn't have a 32-bit addressing mode.

Re:Literal who

[Halo1]

If you're interested in the technical details of how they manage to do that, there was a very interesting presentation [youtube.com] on it at WineConf last year. It turns out Apple has been fairly accommodating to their requirements in this respect.

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[DamnOregonian]

Very interested! Thank you

When you can't sell..

[Midnight_Falcon]

I have doubts the company was very profitable if this happened. Usually owners sell the company..and this finances their retirement. At the least, Valve would have had an interest in acquiring them.

So the cynic in me thinks this is a spin doctoring for the founder to move away from a business that wasn't profitable or sellable.

Unfortunately, every worker owned tech cooperative I was familiar with has gone out of business or is struggling. Noble idea, terrible results. Case in point: TechCollective now

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[sconeu]

Defense giant SAIC is an employee-owned company.

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[sconeu]

I stand corrected. Apparently SAIC went public somewhere around 2016.

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[DamnOregonian]

I echo your concerns, but also have to wonder... Why isn't Valve chomping at the bit to buy them, if they're doing so bad?

CodeWeavers are a major portion of the effort that led to Proton.

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[omnichad]

I don't know about profitability much profitability - or at least not growth. The only product of theirs I ever heard of was "Crossover" which was their compatibility layer for Microsoft Office. I think they just have a contract with Steam for help on Proton at this point. I can't imagine many are still subscribing to Crossover when Office has mostly moved to a subscription and there are fairly capable web versions of a lot of the MS Office software.

Re:When you can't sell..

[popdookey]

I have doubts the company was very profitable if this happened. Usually owners sell the company..and this finances their retirement. At the least, Valve would have had an interest in acquiring them.

So the cynic in me thinks this is a spin doctoring for the founder to move away from a business that wasn't profitable or sellable.

Unfortunately, every worker owned tech cooperative I was familiar with has gone out of business or is struggling. Noble idea, terrible results. Case in point: TechCollective now shows 5 employees on LinkedIn. I recall them being 30+ in 2010. Other MSPs have grown exponentially in the meantime.

Profitability has nothing to do with a decision to let the people who run the company actually own the company. Usually owners don't care as much about their employees and the company culture, so they sell out without taking care of the people who made them successful. The realist in me sees this as far more sustainable, equitable, and economically beneficial.

Fortunately, every employee-owned company I am familiar with is thriving. I seek them out because they are more accountable. There will be more over time and I anticipate logarithmic growth.

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[Midnight_Falcon]

Profitability has nothing to do with a decision to let the people who run the company actually own the company.

Usually it has everything to do with it! You can only sell a company of this size if it has over $1mm in profits, or rather, EBITDA. Typically that's at a 5-7x multiple for in the software dev consulting space. So $1mm in EBITDA = $5-7mm valuation. However, if you have less than $1mm EBITDA, almost all won't even buy you -- it's too risky and it's not going to get underwritten.

Looking on LinkedIn, CodeWeavers has 45 employees. CodeWeavers also said in the blog post they have a bit over $5MM in rev

Re: When you can't sell..

[Grokew]

Damned if you do, Damned if you don't...

Communism!

[VeryFluffyBunny]

The workers have seized the means of production. The company is now owned by & run for the benefit of its workers. This is a kind of communism.

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[Darren Hiebert]

I don't think communism has ever benefited its workers, or its citizens, in any country where it has been tried. But it definitely benefits those in charge.

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

Why do you say that?

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[Darren Hiebert]

Because no communist country has ever succeeded in being materially productive, due to simple human nature. Once you put in place the same pay for everyone, the lazy and slackers realize they can get paid the same amount no matter how little they do, and the hard workers get tired of getting paid the same as the slackers for much more effort and give up trying. Productivity falls precipitously. This is what made the labor camps necessary—the country couldn't produce what society needed and had to forc

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

Name a communist country.

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

Actually, to make it fair & balanced, name a communist country & and capitalist country.

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[Midnight_Falcon]

How about Cuba for communist and Singapore for capitalist? Although, no country is purely capitalist or communist, leading to a "no true scotsman" logical fallacy in amateur debates.

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

Nope. Cuba's a socialist republic (like India) & Singapore is a parliamentary republic (like the UK, which means that it has a head of state that is *not* the elected leader, which is typical of British colonies). All functioning countries have mixed economies, e.g. the USA has a mix of government owned (socialist), worker owned (collectivist/communist), & publicly traded (capitalist) organisations. The differences are in the proportions of the mix & the political influence/power that each exert

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[Midnight_Falcon]

Exactly, everything is a mixed system and no pure Adam Smith-capitalist system, nor pure Karl Marx communist system exists. However, in the colloquial sense of the word (and the academic sense as used in comparative politics), countries that are more aligned with communist institutions are considered 'communist,' such as Cuba having a politburo and largely state-owned, highly-regulated economy. Likewise, Singapore having a democratic republic system and largely privately-owned [and minimally regulated] ec

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

So why do US media refer to Cuba as a communist state but not India? They both have very similar political systems. The labels applied unevenly/discretionally by the media & politicians say more about them than the countries they're labelling.

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[Midnight_Falcon]

So why do US media refer to Cuba as a communist state but not India? They both have very similar political systems. .

Because they absolutely do not have similar political systems. Cuba is a one-party state governed by a Politburo featuring a largely command economy. See the Wikipedia article on communist states [wikipedia.org] for a longer definition.

India by contrast is a multi-party parliamentary republic, whose political systems and institutions are closer to Singapore than to Cuba. Notably, it has separation of powers (legislative, executive and judicial are separate and don't answer to the Supreme Soviet/Politburo/etc), a

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

But don't the current Prime Minister of India, Manuel Murmu, & the President of Cuba Droupadi Marrero Cruz, coordinate their domestic & international political policy decisions to ensure free-market, Marxist-Leninist electoral systems like the ones established by Mahatma Castro & Fidel Gandhi?

Re: Communism!

[Midnight_Falcon]

You appear to have graduated from amateur high-school-civics arguments to pure psychobabble.

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

Ah, so you resort to insults when it comes down to specifics. Gotcha!

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[Midnight_Falcon]

You mean the psychobabble of switching the names of the leaders of India and Cuba? It's psychobabble and you know it.

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

And now you're using words that you don't know the meaning of. Why are you referring to my comments as "psychobabble"? Gotcha again!

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[Midnight_Falcon]

You haven't actually responded to any of the points I raised, but rather you created a nonsensical argument about India and Cuba international relations, switching names of their leaders as to make your argument incomprehensible.

Care to talk about how Cuba is on the Wikipedia list of "Communist Countries" despite your (wrong) definition of it not being communist?

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

Now you're avoiding my questions. What's up? Afraid to engage? Don't worry. You're no match for my enormous intellect. There's nothing to be ashamed of.