How can WINE ever be as good as Windows when it is forever doomed to play catchup with a vast team of developers and decades of secret compatibility hacks that make Windows behave differently for different applications on purpose? I know that the hacks exist in a special shim layer and Windows has a database of applications that require certain sets of shims enabled. But details like an actual documentation of the individual shims are secret.
Well the WINE folks have their heart in the right place, but its not really a good idea to re-implement a proprietary API for the purposes of binary compatibility. In any case, it makes sense for Windows Version N+1 to ensure compatibility with buggy applications that worked in Windows Version N. From an end-user standpoint I would hope all operating systems invest resources in ensuring application compatibility.
That shim layer makes sense. The real problem here is the lack of documentation. You can either reverse engineer aplication behaviour one application at a time to create your own layer or you can try to reverse engineer the database of hacks, which is skirting reverse engineering restrictions in the Windows EULA. Either one is time consuming.
