A secretive Manila start-up is developing software that, it claims, will allow virtually any Windows application to run on the Linux operating system. While fuzzy on details, the company, called SpecOps Labs, says that it has developed a novel approach to the problem, one that uses both existing open-source software as well as proprietary code the company has written itself.

SpecOps' software has been under development since 2002, when an engineer working on an Internet dial-up program for company founder Fred Lewis' previous venture, a Philippines telecommunications company, developed a novel way for running Windows applications on Linux.

Not long after, Lewis read about a U.S. company called CodeWeavers, which had developed software that would run Microsoft Office on Linux. He went back to his engineer.

"Once I saw that and asked him if this was the same thing that he was talking about. And he said, 'Yeah,' although, based on his idea, he would be able to run a lot more programs," Lewis said.

This was the beginning of SpecOps Labs, which with its staff of 20 hopes to achieve on Linux what many consider to be the near-impossible task of running the majority of Windows applications out of the box. After two years of software development, the company now expects to release its first beta software by year-end, Lewis said.

Though SpecOps is reluctant to discuss details of its product, called David, the company has been showing proof-of-concept demonstrations to potential industry partners recently, and last month it enticed Asian Linux vendor TurboLinux to sign a letter of intent with SpecdOps indicating its interest in discussing a distribution deal for the product.

"From what we've learned so far, it seems to be very easy to install, and once it's installed, it seems to run in the background," said Michael Jennings, director of international business with TurboLinux, based in Tokyo. "That makes it very interesting to us," he said. "A lot of the impediment to getting to the desktop is the lack of Office support."

TurboLinux, however, has not committed to shipping David, Jennings said. His company's experience with the software has been limited to observing it running in the SpecOps labs. "We've not seen it on site at TurboLinux's labs, nor have our engineers had the chance to see it directly," he said.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.