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Connectix Considering Open Sourcing VGS?
Araquel writes, "MacOS Rumors is reporting that Connectix is considering releasing an Open Source Linux version of its Virtual Game Station product (VGS is a PlayStation emulator for Macs). MacOS Rumors is calling for people to e-mail Connectix, requesting that they actually release the source code."
That's one way to piss off Sony...
If what you say is true..... then I still don't care.
Could that be the killer app? Having the entire library of Playstation games available on a linux box would be excellent!
And on top of that, it would make an entirely free way to play playstation games. You would not have to purchase a piece of software like "bleem" to play your playstation games.
In fact, if it were bundled with a distribution of RedHat or similar, you would have a linux computer with thousands of available games!!!
This is sounding better and better the more I think about it.
I think it's a leak, and shame on you Rob for posting something from MacOS rumors - their reputation is... questionable..
I'm all for this but didn't we go though something like this with Loki and Blizzard and the fact that emailing is interperted as spam? How about snail-mailing them?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Yeah, lets see, why don't they take a piece of money making software and give the source code to people who can do whatever they want with it. Realistically how many of you think Connectix cares if we want the source code, and would actually give it to us?
They mixed up the VGS/VPC thing just like the guy who sent in that last Connectix story to Slashdot. MacOS Rumors does not have any knowledgable sources except for the stuff they swipe off the front page of AppleInsider, and even that's wrong half the time. They're the Apple equivalent of the Weekly World News, they post anything and everything that gets emailed to them, including obvious pranks and fake rumors.
What I'm praying now is for Micro$oft to release DirectX source under the GPL...
For the mac there's PSMac and for linux there's Sope. For the PC there's FPSE but I haven't the link on me. None of them are too far aloung but all are promising with more developers. Especially FPSE since he's working to HLE the bios also.
-Corey O'Connor
Either it's complete spoof, or Connectix is looking to the open source community to provide them legal protection, just as it's been trying to do with DeCSS...
I'll be really sad if connectix does this. They spent quite a long time developing this peice of software, withstood the first of two lawsuits standing, and are basically about to throw the money they could have earned to the wind...
Of course the 2nd lawsuit is a patent case, so maybe they know they've violated some patents... In which case, again, OSS seems to be the savior for projects which are dependant on other companies patents.
If their product is legit, they should keep it for themselves and make some money. If it's not, then it certainly shouldn't be open sourced. It'll just tarnish the whole OSS movements repuatation.
And don't anyone tell me they can earn money from it after open sourcing it... Maybe they can, but not enough to offset their costs... Open source software sells (when it does) for multitudes of times cheaper than commercial software. It's all fine and dandy for programmers with day jobs, but i don't think it meshes well with a company's economics, bills, and shareholders.
mac os rumors is basically...well crap. this isnt a troll, its the truth. ryan (the owner) makes stuff. dont fall for his news....show
some integrity
I had to respond.
Yes MOSR is a _RUMORS_ site. Sometimes they print the truth, sometimes they don't. Sometimes it is
painfully obvious that they don't understand what their sources are saying.
However, I think it is very disingenious to claim that they make stuff up with out proof. Say what you want if you have some proof to back it up, but they are pretty accurate about somethings (earnings reports, they hit some of the recent consumer stuff right on the head and so on).
About this specific rumor:With the recent accounement about VPC, I wouldn't be suprised if you saw a binary-only distibution with in the next year. However, i doubt that connectix is truely cool enough to open source it, especially with all the $$$ they invested to fight of the Empire err... I mean Sony.
Myddrin
That's what you get for not having a T1 to the house. ;-)
Maybe now you'll listen when all your geek friends tell you not to buy something.
CSG_SurferDude
Wasting time at work again!
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
(obligatory counterproductive moderation comment here)
/. earlier this week. As we all know now, that story was completely misreported; it was Connectix which was bundling Red Hat with their Virtual PC emulation software for the Mac. (Okay, so calling it 'Virtual PC *for* Red Hat Linux' isn't the best idea, but...)
This is absolutely 100% not true in any way, shape, or form. MacOSRumors is well-known among people with functioning neurons for outright fabrication of information; in this case, the 'kernel of truth' they built this story around is the erroneous 'Connectix is bundling VGS with Red Hat' story posted here on
Connectix is not on record as stating a Linux port, open or otherwise, is in the cards; as of now, the only non-Mac port is slated to be to Win9x.
C'mon! After having already had one bogus Connectix/VGS story in a week, you'd think a little bit of verification work would have been done! This is a new low... Slashdot's gone and trollerized itself!
Also, look at the "international" section of the FAQ (right below the "legal" section), which talks about the geographic-region encoding.
--
The shareholder is always right.
Have you noticed lately the horde of rumors permeating the internet lately: Bill Gates giving away Windows source,... and now this.
I'm not sure who starts these rumors, but that is exactly what they are, just rumors.
I wonder if they are somehow related to the recent DDOS attacks??
I think we're on to something here...
Ok, enough BSing. My point is that Slashdot should try to post slightly more credible stories and news. In other words research it a little before posting every little comment from some loony that comes along on the grape vine or is deposited in their "make a comment" bin. When we post this kind of garbage it only serves to weaken our credibility.
Just my two cents...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
it will be Sony. Software will be nice, but Sony makes the hardware. They've been bringing the cost down for years now - they can spit out those chips like popcorn.
Furthermore, the PS2 development box runs Linux on the Emotion Engine. Consider a Linux box running an Emotion Engine (and yes, that port is long since completed and works just fine), with a complete set of PS/PS2 graphics and sound chips, and the drivers to go with them. If that doesn't make you drool, it should. With a top-flight, pre-configured (i.e., easy to use) desktop, that would be the Linux box for the masses.
This might even address Judge Jackson's "application barrier to entry," at least somewhat. Out of the box there'd be the thousands of PS and PS2 titles, and all the Linux ones too. Zoomba.
Of course, the PS2 development box also writes DVDs - so much for DeCSS :-)
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Klactovedestene!
BTW, MacOS Rumors hasn't had a good rumor since the pre-Jobs-returns days. I do know BlackLightMedia (one of the several companies MOSR has created) used to handle the ads for Slashdot. Maybe Rob likes sending much needed traffic to an old friend?
Check out AbiWord.
Here's another emulator story (which I submitted, but got rejected... I think the /. authors don't like me)
Someone has created a Dreamcast VMU (Visual Memory Unit) emulator. I believe that he has even been able to get a program he made with it to download to the VMU and play a mini-game he made himself. It may not be a Dreamcast emulator, but it's a start.
Also, there's a few pages geared toward accelerating Dreamcast emulator development here and here.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
What is with slashdot and all the rumors lately? I come here for news not speculation. This is quickly turning into a rumor discussion forum. Is there not enough tech news to go around that they have to make up news? We do a lot of bashing on the "sensationalist" media here, and now this site is becoming sensationalized.
I realize slashdot and Macosrumors used to be (or still are?) affiliated with each other, but the slogan says News for Nerds not fun possible stories that might be coming in the tech industry...
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." --Saul Belloe
Now, where are the high scores for negative karma?
In reality... this is so stupid. Wasn't there a story earlier today about how Microsoft is considering releasing the source for Windows? So what? And there was a story yesterday about a new dev kernel being release? Who cares? These stories are so pointless. Where exactally is the "stuff that matters" A company considering releasing the source for a product isn't really news, and it certainly isn't stuff that matters. Get over it.
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This question is beyond my abilities, but I wonder how difficult it would be to do an open-source version of VGS.
MOSR is good every once in a while. But it's a rumor site; people here seem to be forgetting that. The name alone tells you to take everything on that page with a grain of salt, if not the whole shaker.
No, MOSR isn't very accurate. But they don't claim to be. Look at the name, for crying out loud.
MOSR appears to be run by habitual liars. From my personal experience they're about a third as accurate as the rumor sites in their market (Apple and Macintosh related whisperings)... and rumour sites aren't that accurate to begin with. Why does slashdot somewhat frequently post stuff from MOSR but not the more credible Mac news sites (more ofen.. they do sometimes)? As for OpenSourcing VGS... seems like it could be beneficial, though I don't know if it'd ever happen. VGS is the best PlayStation emulator I've run on my G3 and having that out there would be nice... it'd also be a slap in face to SONY. SONY needs a *Slap*>
LW
Taking into consideration Rob's mispost just the other day regarding VPC shipping with Red Hat, who's to say that MacOSRumors, a site of questionable accuracy at best. Not to say that it's wrong, but it's a rumor site, with next to no basis in reality on many occasions. For all we know, the only reason this was posted was because someone read the unedited /. post, started thinking about what it meant, and *poof* we now think we have Open Source VGS for Linux.
If this is the case, and it keeps up, you realize what we get next? Mac OS X is running Linux for the backend, not BSD, but the Linux core is actually running under VPC, on OS 9... yeah... that's it... and of course it'll get worse, but I'll be really frightened when that happens.
Christopher Kalos
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
And, is there a high score list for negative karma?
While I realize this story is most likely not true (see the post that's moderated up at the top, I doubt anything will replace it), if it were true, everyones reaction who knows anything at all about emulators should be saying "Well, duh". There are probably not a handful of closed source emulators, but there are hundreds and hundreds of open source ones.
Being surprised at this would be like being surprised at a roguelike being open-sourced.
The emulation community is a good example of what *REALLY* happens with open source stuff. Linux is really a big freak in the open source world, 99% of other open source projects release their code to no avail and are never improved upon and their code is never used to create variant software. One emulator, SNES9x, was railed against for having closed source. Everyone shouted that as soon as the source was released, the pieces of the SNES that were not emulated yet would be within days. The source code has been released for around 2 years now and no one has modified it save the 2 original authors. It's a perfect example of what happens in most open source projects, there is an element of risk thrown in with open sourcing your software. Sure, all bugs are shallow with enough eyes, but wheres the guarantee those eyes will show up or that people more competent in the subject than the original authors won't want to start over from scratch and do it themselves? More often the latter happens than anything else. They see someone did something cool and decides to do it themselves in a different way and they improve on it in that way... same thing that happens in the closed source world.
Esperandi
Like many others posted below, I will have to add on to it. Ryan Meader's attempt to predict the latest Mac industry rumors are usually never true. The VGS post was just based on a post made to Slashdot a few days ago concerning Linux and VGS coming from Connectix (which was later updated to be a miscommunication). MacOS Rumors just took this information and made up a whole story about it.
If they had released a version of their software which played copied playstation games, they would have absolutely no chance in hell of ever winning a court case. Right now they're fighting a court case almost exactly the same as DeCSS. Sony makes a proprietary player, these guys have developed a better player (it IS better than a PSX because you can run at higher resolutions than a TV can handle). Sony is arguing patent infringments, but they've lost this court case before to the people who make Bleem!, a PSX emulator for the PC. Both of these products can survive as long as they implement the copy procedures.
Just because they're not complete dirtbags hell-bent on letting people play burned PSX CDs doesn't mean they won't release it open source. Not everyone gets into open source so that they can get software for free.
Esperandi
Why on earth would Connectix open source a profitable application when they've never shown any interest in doing so before? What would be the point?
About the only possible kernel of truth I could see in this would be if they lose the law suit, and "accidentally" released the source so as to spit in Sony's eye.
The MacOSRumors story is based on the bogus story posted on Slashdot a few days ago about VGS being bundled with RedHat. That story turned out to be wrong, but that didn't stop MacOSRumors from picking up on it as though it were true! As a side note, why on Earth do people assume that if a software company makes a Linux version of their product that it *must* be open source? There can be closed-source, commercial software for Linux. Just because someone is making a Linux version of their software doesn't mean they have to give up selling it!
Free Hans!
They went to press with quite a few stories about "Microsoft to port Windows 98 to Macs".
I highly doubt there was any evidence for this what-so-ever, besides anonymous coward e-mails pulling their chain.
Furthermore, they seem totally unaware that:
A) Windows 98 has enough x86 assembly that it's pretty much non-portable as it stands.
B) Microsoft had already ported Windows NT to PowerPC -- the lack of Mac support was purely a political issue.
These guys are total clowns -- Note how they post a story, Slashdot links to it, and then they post the Slashdot link as "confirmation" of their story. WTF?
If anything, their site is a good way to check what misinformation Apple is spreading (Settop box prototypes right before the iMac launch, for example. Whoops -- if they had acutally be reading their own rumors, they would realize that the settop box was the well known and cancelled Pippen project.) What reliable information they do print, they get from other sites such as www.appleinsider.com.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Also, I remember there used to be some kind of partnership between BLM and Slashdot, several years ago. Can anybody provide more info? What was lowly Ryan Meader's role in the creation of Slashdot? This is going back at least 2 years.
The only proof I can find (other than my memory of a mention of BLM on Slashdot a couple of years ago) is this page, which has a capture of a MOSR page from December, 1998. Look down at the bottom, it says "For those who don't follow the development of Linux (for those interested, Slashdot is an excellent place for all manner of geek news -- not that we're exactly totally unbiased, as Slashdot is a BLM partner)".
Anybody know anything about this? Maybe this has something to do with the recent stories from MOSR being posted lately... maybe Rob feels bad for Meader, whose site does nowhere near this much traffic. But then again... (funny).
_________________
rooooar
What really wound up happening, BTW, is that Connectix is selling a version of Virtual PC (the PC emulator for Mac) with RedHat preinstalled.
Connectix Press Release
woof!
Emulating is not rocket science you dildo. I honestly doubt it took a lot of work to get it done.
I'm sick and tired of this software is hard crap. No Barbie software is easy.
Plus given the fact they didn't have the Sony owned libraries to work with in the first place, they didn't have to reinvent the whole damn thing probably not even half of it. There's plenty of replacement libraries all over the net.
How do you people fall for all this hype?
It's not rocket science. It took no more than a couple of weeks to Port Linux and BSD to the DreamCast not that's to port a whole kernel to a an rchitecture not just interface the architecture which uis all you really have to do to emulatre an asrch. I mean let's suppose a library that does the same work as the the hardware beats the fuck out of the Sony hardware when it's designed for the PC? Why the fuck would anyone do a true blue emulation if there's better ways. And it's not hard to get things to work perfectly. Take up some coding classes before you go paranoid like that.
Finally,
Open source software sells (when it does) It sells period.
for multitudes of times cheaper than commercial software
Bull fucking shit.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
"Alternative Web site." Boy, if Meader hadn't lost Slashdot he'd be a happy man now...
Anyway, this seems to answer my question.
_________________
rooooar
i like playstation playstation good my dogs breath smells bad
lose != loose
"An old friend familiar with operations at Connectix recently confirmed for Rumors the existence of an open-source Linux version of their popular Virtual GameStation product. "
You gotta wonder about MacOS Rumors when they don't even understand what 'Open Source' means. If it was truly an Open Source product, we wouldn't be sitting around here talking about it...we'd have it.
Connectix will be shipping a version with RedHat preinstalled soon. Someone below linked to the press release.
_________________
rooooar
ok, i think i know what happened.
/. saw this, misinterpreted this as saying that _vgs_ is coming to redhat. this was almost immediately updated, saying that no, this story was totally false, the product of much crack-smoking.
/. story, ignored the update saying it was false, and decided that this meant that connectix was considering open sourceing vgs. again,this is a false story based on a false /. story.
/. seems to have seen the macosrumors story, didn't check the facts (or references), and now we're seeing this, a false /. story based on a false macosrumors story that was based on a false /. story. whee!
last week at macworld tokyo, connectix announced that they would start selling virtualpc (_not_ virtual game station, this is a product that emulates intel on a mac) that bundled redhat for linux. i'm not sure why they're bothering with this, as linuxppc works just dandy and uses a redhat base, and connectix is charging the same $ for it as they're charging for the dos version, but anyway....
a couple days later, someone at
that day, macosrumors saw the
now
therefore, i would now like to present both slashdot and macosrumors both the pulitzer prize and the newberry award for fictitious journalism.
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
OK, I've put together a theory on how this rumor ballooned so wildly out of proportion, so read below if you want my idea. ;-)
;) Hopefully this will be avoided in the future!
:)
Slashdot posted an article that mixed up Connectix's plan to bundle Redhat with their emulator Virtual PC (VPC) with Connectix's Macintosh-only Virtual Game Station (VGS). Before an update could be posted to explain the confusion, MOSR's prestigious Ryan Meader saw the post. Using his common tactics for obtaining information for MOSR, he stole the incorrect information and embellished it with his own lies. (If anyone is feeling like I personally don't believe anything MOSR says, you're right. Please check the archives at http://www.mosr.net/ (the site is now defunct, but as I said, check the archives) if you want to see some very good rebuttals of pure crap/stolen news Ryan has posted.) Anyway, a Slashdot reader who read MOSR saw the story, which corroborated the incorrect story he saw earlier (perhaps he had not reloaded Slashdot to see the update yet) and so he submitted it. It was picked up as a story again at Slashdot because it appeared to lend credence to that same story that was (mistakenly) posted the day before.
Sadly people have submitted MOSR topics before to Slashdot. I would recommend that people don't submit MOSR topics, as well as advising Slashdot that they shouldn't pick up stories like that.
Oh yeah, remember that this is merely a theory, although from my point of view it does seem very likely.
Looking through this thread, I see that somewheres around 100% of the posters say something like "Oh no, not another MOSR post! This is total disinformation!"
There's next to no discussion of open-source software, emulators, Bleem, or anything that this article was supposed to start discussion of. Instead, the crowd is getting hostile at Rob and Ryan, proposing conspiracy theories. If Rob knows what's good for himself at this point, he'll back away from mosr.com and stay away.
Not only is Ryan Meader getting a few thousand additional hits, there are a few thousand people more who know he's a lying bastard. He'll be run out of his job.
In the meantime, the small industry of parodying him is doing great...
Where is my mind?
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
I don't know if the rumors are true or not, but it probably wont make a big difference either way. Most businesses that use Linux wouldn't have much interest in Sony's kid games; afterall businesses use productivity apps like 'Doom' and 'Quake' :-)
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
No. I refer you here for a straightforward rundown of Ryan's reliability.
Not exactly true. Ryan was pretty friendly with Jason Haas of LinuxPPC, Inc. for a while and tried to bamboozle him into some strategic partnership. Then there's the fact that Ryan thought that Linux was Hot Shit until he caught wind that Mac OS X had a BSD layer that was derived from FreeBSD 3.2, at which point he, without consulting his then-sysadmin/bitchslave (me), DECREED that BLM's LIVE PRODUCTION SERVERS (oh wait, there was only one left by then--the power supply in the other exploded and he didn't feel like paying to get the computer fixed) would be switched over to FreeBSD early one Sunday Morning, despite the fact that I had informed him beforehand that I had absolutely no FreeBSD experience, and neither did anybody on his pay^H^H^Hwork-for-free-roll. What a fucking genious.
Please see above.
mosr's story is a backwards version of the REAL story. the register reported that connectix is bundling redhat with their virtual pc (or whatever it is) x86 emulator. for a good laugh, read mosr from time to time. when the 500mhz g4 bug was news, they claimed that all that had to be done was to run them at 499mhz instead. anyone with a clue knows that running it at 499.999999999999mhz is not going to make it run fine. mosr apparently didn't understand that 500mhz is an approximate value and thought that 500 was some sort of magical number that causes the bug, as soon as you hit 500. i nearly fell out of my chair, laughing, when i read that mosr story. mosr isn't exactly into fact checking.
Yeah, reverse engineering is explcitly legal as spelled out in the DMCA, old news. But the court case going on now is about patent infringement. People don't seem to be realizing that it doesn't matter if you come to the same conclusion separately, if they're copyrighted the process, you have to change yours or get some nice fines and maybe prison time...
Esperandi
You can't patent ideas or concepts, only very very specific designs... being as the Connectix product is software and everything in the PSX is hard ware I don't see how patent law would apply, but I guess the courts will show.
what a waste of a moderation point.
Hardware-wise they are pretty similar (cut down PMac 6100). I don't know about software, but I'd be pretty shocked if the settop box was all that different than the web interface the Pippen shipped with.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.