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From TransGaming's Business Model page:

We need to encourage more user participation in the development process, and give users more responsibility, both financially and otherwise, for the ultimate result.
Does this sounds like a bad thing?
And they will put the fruit of their labours (the revisions to the Wine tree) once "we have a paying subscriber base of at least 20,000 users."
All they want is to get paid for the work they are doing up front. Work that you the end user can direct by subscribing and voting.

What's not to get about their business model? Like the street performer they are providing entertainment with the hopes that if they provide a quality product that people will be willing to pay for it once.
The upside over closed source projects is that you won't have to pay for the same code in the next version of the game!

Garion, The whole point of the subscriber model that TransGaming is using is that IF enough people subscribe, they'll release the source code to the common tree. Then those changes can be used everywhere.

Ok, TransGaming can't release the copy protection code, but that's hardly their fault, now is it? Go, subscribe, vote for your favourite game. Skip the Starbucks latte once this month and you'll break even.

Garion, The whole point of the subscriber model that TransGaming is using is that IF enough people subscribe, they'll release the source code to the common tree. Then those changes can be used everywhere.

Ok, TransGaming can't release the copy protection code, but that's hardly their fault, now is it? Go, subscribe, vote for your favourite game. Skip the Starbucks latte once this month and you'll break even.

Info on the status of B&W under WineX can be found here, and if you're a subscriber, you can vote to show you want TransGaming to focus on it. It's already got a popularity rating of 325 as I write this, which is good.

HanzoSan is correct - the really groundbreaking thing that TransGaming is doing is testing a new way for a commercial company to work within the Open Source world. Like the rest, it is concentrating on offering a specialized service (Getting your favourite games to work under your OS of choice) but still putting the fruits of their labours (the source code) back into the common pool.

I think that this is one of the coolest things that I have seen in a long time. This kind of thing is where commercial business can see that Closed Source is inefficient and unwieldy.

Bravo Gavriel!
Matt

If TransGaming have said that once they reach a certain level of subscriptions, they will remove the restrictions on their code (I didn't see that on their site, but I'll take your word for it)

Here's a snippet from the WineX source code download page:

"Once we have reached our subscription goals, we plan to release all of the WineX source code under the Wine license, which will allow it to be directly integrated with the core Wine project code hosted at www.winehq.com."

Yes, but their business model is premised on a promise to the community that they will open the source if they get enough subscribers. The community has a right to demand accountability.

Their competitors (who? Loki?) will find it difficult to capitalize on this information unless they release the same information. Even then, it's not clear how they could use this information to their advantage. Finally, markets can't operate efficiently without the free flow of information. We have the right as consumers (and especially as customers) to demand this information.

Here is transgaming's business model, which you'll notice mentions the street performer protocol and 20000 subscribers explicitly.

Bryguy

• WINE is licenced BSD. As such, there is no compelling mechanism that requires that any "work units" be re-submitted back into the main project

From the Transgaming sources page:

• "Once we have reached our subscription goals, we plan to release all of the WineX source code under the Wine license, which will allow it to be directly integrated with the core Wine project code hosted at www.winehq.com. Until then, we will periodically submit selected portions of our code for integration with the Wine project."

Either you didn't know that, or you think they're liars and chose not to give them even the benefit of the doubt by bringing it to our attention. Of course, that still leaves the "problem" that WINE is BSD rather than GPL.

Here's the thing. If you, or another GPL evanglist wants to replicate Transgaming's work (or the whole of WINE) under a GPL license, there's nothing stopping you. They've even given you their source code to look at to help you clean room it. That fact that you choose not to do that does not reflect on Transgaming or WINE, it reflects on you.

Perhaps you think that it's better to have nobody doing this than to have a "poisoner" like Trangaming doing it? If you really think that, I'd be delighted to hear you explain why. Is it GPL or nothing for you, and if so, why not spend your time being part of the solution rather than casting slings and arrows at Transgaming?

• Did someone else noticed that transgamin has licensed macrovision safedisc copy protection

Yes. Further to that, I wonder how it's being distributed, because Transgaming claim that:

• "The complete source code to TransGaming WineX is available through VA Linux's SourceForge website"

Any idea if the Macrovision Safedisc code is in there? (I know, I know, I'll find out myself tonight).

It isn't just The Sims. Transgaming and the Wine developers have done an incredible job. If you haven't looked at the game compatibility list recently, do so. Anything with a 5 (officially supported by Transgaming) or 4 (runs nicely) should be fine. It's up to an incredible number of good games now.

Nonrandom Link

A friend of mine who runs windows has this game, and it seems pretty cool, if not occasionally buggy. Looking throught their list of supported games, it doesn't look like it works at all though. Too bad. I would probably pay for this if they could get that particular one to work.

Another area where subscriptions can be useful is in a Street Performer Protocol like context, e.g. Transgaming, where the code is GPL'd when a sufficient number of subscribers is reached.

Who the hell is TransGaming and has anyone ever used this WineX technology of theirs?

Sure, although CS sucks,.. it does run fine under linux. Just like many other games.

Although I do have to agree with you. Q3UT is a hell of alot better than CS.

Sure, although CS sucks,.. it does run fine under linux. Just like many other games.

Although I do have to agree with you. Q3UT is a hell of alot better than CS.

I'd pay for a port of DirectX that *worked*. I wouldn't pay for the *chance* that said port will come out (i.e. Codeweaver's subscription philosophy) when there's really a lower chance that it will happen.

I think you're confusing Codeweavers with Transgaming. Codeweavers is selling a product to support Quicktime, Shockwave, and a few other plugins on Linux. It works right now. Transgaming is selling subscriptions for effort in supporting Windows games.

Why stop there?? Just head over to Transgaming and get rid of Windows once and for all.

Like you say - I would rather give $5 a month to a company that is open source like Transgaming than I would to M$. So it might not mean native ports - but at least I am not feeding the beast (directly anyway).

I will personally be buying the CrossOver plugin - and was actually thinking about doing so last night (funny how timing is) - but now that there is a demo I will get to try it out first - which is great.

Derek

Well, from what I can tell, there are alot of games that are in Limbo until the Transgaming guys get DirectX 8 up and running, and I imagine this is one of them.

If you go over to Transgaming, you can put some votes towards it, which will get the TG guys in gear to make it Work in WineX.

Vote for it on Transgaming then.

Transgaming's proprietary Wine extensions allow you to run the Sims and other DirectX games with Wine, but it costs $5 a month to sign up.

Besides what I have already said - I would also like to comment on the fact that if you can get a game to run usning Transgaming it usually looks just fine.

The directx7 implementation is great - it is there. Mostly it is some of the other parts of the system that have problems (ie loading the program, or installing the program - but here again Transgaming did an entire implementation of MS's DCOM - that in itself was a huge feat).

So call it what you want - but I don't think it is an emulator because it doesn't create software instances of hardware (like running an NES emulator creates a "virtual" NES in software so the games like it).

The point is just go try it! The first month is free anyway - and after that it is only $5. I don't know about the rest of you, but being able to play all the games I already own in linux is like a wet-dream come true, and if $5 a month will help that out then I am there.

Derek

Ya I have seen your posts - I post as friedmud there too.

It is a tough decision between Directx8 and Directx6 - I just dunno. I think I have voted +2 for 8 and +1 for 6 - but that is because I have bought more new games recently and I want to make sure that new games get continued support.

But I can understand why we might want to leave that to Loki and focus on getting the other hundreds of games running on Directx6.

Tough decision though.

(Note to all you people who have not signed up at Transgaming, you will not understand what we're talking about because you can't vote - so if you wanna be in the know, and if you want to have a say, THEN GO SIGN UP!)

Derek

No. TransGaming's subscription service went live AFTER these two posts of yours. Subscribe here

For those that don't know. TransGaming subscription service is now live. Subscribers get a full participation in the process of choosing which areas of wine and which games to focus on. They also get support in the forums and so on!
so go subscribe!!

I want to like Transgaming wholeheartedly, but seeing that they're licensing CD copy protection from Macrovision makes me a little less enthusiastic. . .

their subscription service is now live. go subscribe

What happens if it takes them 5 years to get those 20,000 subscriptions?

I think they're betting on the fact that it won't. If it does, that's a clear indication that there's not enough community support for them to continue with this business model, and they'll have to think of something else, or just lay everyone off.

What happens if by the time they FINALLY get that 20,000th, they've expended most of the money it all generated?

Well, if you read their subscription page, you'd see that they are not even taking your credit card number right now. In fact, what they want to see is at least 20000 people expressing interest in subscribing before they actually ask you for your money.

As for using up all of the money before releasing the code, what they're asking for is a $5 / month committment, not a one-time fee. They're looking for an ongoing revenue stream, on the order of $100000 / month, to support their development costs, and keep some open source programmers paid.

I don't see why this model would work any better than an all out commercial liscense.

Well, for one thing, unlike a commercial vendor, they won't need to worry about "piracy"; as long as they have a solid base of users willing to commit financially to the product on an ongoing basis, they are perfectly happy with all of the freeloaders using it and enjoying it.

If the project is good enough, people are going to pay for it.

I agree. I'd pay for it. I hope there are 19999 other people who would, too. I'm also glad that they would let me use it even if I couldn't pay for it, or didn't believe that it was worth $60/year.

I really think that this could be a viable open-source business model, and while I can't tell you to support it, I'd encourage anyone who might be interested to fill out their survey to show some support.

What happens if it takes them 5 years to get those 20,000 subscriptions?

I think they're betting on the fact that it won't. If it does, that's a clear indication that there's not enough community support for them to continue with this business model, and they'll have to think of something else, or just lay everyone off.

What happens if by the time they FINALLY get that 20,000th, they've expended most of the money it all generated?

Well, if you read their subscription page, you'd see that they are not even taking your credit card number right now. In fact, what they want to see is at least 20000 people expressing interest in subscribing before they actually ask you for your money.

As for using up all of the money before releasing the code, what they're asking for is a $5 / month committment, not a one-time fee. They're looking for an ongoing revenue stream, on the order of $100000 / month, to support their development costs, and keep some open source programmers paid.

I don't see why this model would work any better than an all out commercial liscense.

Well, for one thing, unlike a commercial vendor, they won't need to worry about "piracy"; as long as they have a solid base of users willing to commit financially to the product on an ongoing basis, they are perfectly happy with all of the freeloaders using it and enjoying it.

If the project is good enough, people are going to pay for it.

I agree. I'd pay for it. I hope there are 19999 other people who would, too. I'm also glad that they would let me use it even if I couldn't pay for it, or didn't believe that it was worth $60/year.

I really think that this could be a viable open-source business model, and while I can't tell you to support it, I'd encourage anyone who might be interested to fill out their survey to show some support.

and for any other games u miss, there is always winex

for those of you who are not aware, there is a company working on
directX support for linux. this is an extension of wine, and it is coming along nicely.

But the "evil" API Direct3D is already (mostly) available for Linux. Haven't you heard of trasgaming (http://www.transgaming.com/)?

They are currenly working on D3D port to WINE.

(If you don't know, their license is not fully "free", but they will make it "free" when they get enough "support".)

[ By the way, I don't think opengl will die anytime soon. Because "serious" graphics work is not only "games". have you used SGI? they do not support D3D or whatsoever ]

Loki is the only company out there that has attempted to port commercial windows games to linux. Now, I have no hope of playing all the windows games that I love on linux unless Transgaming can finally finish their DirectX port to wine. Really, this is a shame and it would be sad to see them go. I hope they can work things out. Come on people, buy some linux games!

Not meant as a flame; I would really like to know how this puts more MSFT stuff in the hands of Linux users.

More info on their site.

Support of comonly used APIs will contribute to linux native ports of popular games, WineX and other emulation solutions are a step in the right direction.

Support through an emulation layer isn't the conclusion of any development effort. This is a basic tenet of Open Source. The work of TransGaminga is a great contribution twards this goal. Eventually there will be native Linux support for direct3D. This I am certain of.

As for following Microsoft, implementing their API rather than promoting the potentially vary competitive OpenGL; well, open source operates with an entirely different market model than treditional corporate development. Some market segments such as enterprise IT equally receptive to open source as to treditional software. This allows open source solutions to thrive in that market space. Other market segments such as computer gaming, target a customer base which is generally less technically inclined, and in pursuit of entertainment rather than productivity solutions - I maintain that development of efficient solutions to productivity issues is one of the driving forces behind open source development -, anyway, the gaming customer base is seeking entertainment rather than technical solutions to technical problems. As such, the gaming market will always be dominated by the easiest to use OS, with the simplest setup, and the most readily (as percieved by novice customers) available commerecial support.

This is why game consoles are still as popular as they are. There was a time when game consoles were themost advanced and highly customized platforms for video game entertainment. With the advent of extremely high quality video cards, sound cards, and control devices for PCs over the past decade, it would be reasonable to assume that customers might choose to purchase a PC (which can now be priced competitively wihth some game consoles - as amazing as that is, in and of itself), which is more flexible, and by every reasonable measure, more useful, but, alas! - game consoles are still extremely popular. I maintain that this is because the gaming customer seeks simplicity and ease of use that (as much as it pains me to say) linux doesn't yet provide at this point, even with the great efforts of Ximian, and the Gnome Project, among others

The point of this rambling diatribe is that computer game designer will always favor the simplest to use platform, which is inherently, where the majority of gaming customers will be. This means, that regardless of the elogance or superiority OpenGL, the Linux community will need to adopt direct3D because, as others have pointed out, no programmer wants to port code from one platform to another especially when that requires a significant API change.

--CTH

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There is a company called Transgaming Technologies that is dedicated to make Wine run all Windows games. Unfortunately they will charge the users a small sum. But I think it is well worth it.

Of course this is going to take some time to complete but you can vote for the games you want the most on their website.

Check it out,
http://www.transgaming.com/

I am, for one, a gamer who runs Linux on my desktop. I hate running Windoze for games because the networking downright sucks. I have to lug my Windoze box to the LAN parties because I just don't have any of the games for my Linux box. I went out and bought QIII for Windoze as soon as it was on the shelf, figuring that I would play it until the Linux version came available for download. They then made a statement on their website stating that the Linux binary would not be available for download for the Windoze version of the program. That got me so mad I haven't played the game but twice since then, have since become hooked on Unreal Tourney, and haven't looked back. Many of the games I really play with have linux based servers, which is nice. I just want to be able to play Unreal Tourney on my Linux box. As well as Need For Speed 5. I would go out and buy both of these in a heartbeat if I saw them available for Linux.

I am playing with the latest versions of Wine and Trans-Gaming's version of wine. Haven't been playing with it too long, but it sounds like that would be a great solution for many of these problems. I will keep evaluating Wine and, until it works for my games, will keep running Windoze on one workstation just for my games.

Would you settle for a mapping of Direct3D calls to Mesa's and GLX? Transgaming is working on just a beast. It's distributed as a Wine patch, and has been improving.

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There is a game called CowboyNeal in the list, and its voting page points to goatse.cx in one of the links.

This is not the fault of TransGaming Technologies, but their voting page has some strange games on it. Since you can suggest games, and then vote on suggested games the community as a whole gets to choose what they like. Still, I find myself wondering just who is voting?

Half-Life and its derivatives are high on the list. I agree 100%. But so are:

Unreal Tournament (ported by Loki, free download)
Quake 3 Arena Quake 3 Team Arena (The team addon will upgrade the Linux version)
Starcraft (has run under wine for some time)

I just can't see why Linux users would vote for these (I guess that they do not know that they work under Linux?)

If you like Linux and you like gaming, you should check out Linuxgames now and again. You will be surprised at what you find.

(Now someone is going to argue a point on those games, but I see it as a waste of time to fix something that is not broken. Unreal Tournament for Linux will run faster on Linux than Unreal Tournament for Windows through Wine on Linux any day.)

Because the Direct3d stuff isn't developed by the wine group. it's done by TransGaming. So of course it wouldn't be in the same tree.
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Please note that "TransGaming WineX" is a derivative of the Wine project, consisting of new code for several Wine components, including but not limited to: libddraw.so, libdsound.so, and libdinput.so. More information about Wine can be found at http://www.winehq.com.