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Linux Game Tome Returns!
amccall writes: "After a long outage, The Linux Game Tome has been updated and is now back in action!" Congratulations to Bob for getting the Tome back up, and mad props to Tony Guntharp and the crew at SourceForge for hosting the new site.
A) Sorry, chum. VA and Andover arent "merging". VA bought Andover out because they wanted control of their holdings, ala Slashdot and Freshmeat. Believe me, they didnt buy Andover because they're big fans of Canadian publishers. They wanted control of important fixtures of the Linux community. Andover was aquired . Dont try and sugar-coat it, Chris.
B) You guys "rescued a site that was liked by a bunch of people with no strings attached"? Bullshit. If VA was interested in philanthropy, they would have donated money to Rob & Hemos, and done the same for Patrick over at Freshmeat. Guess what. They didn't. They paid millions of dollars for the right to own it all lock, stock and barrel. Infact, if the rumors are true, VA was one of the original bidders for Slashdot, from what I hear. They were turned away because of details they insisted on including in their offer. They didn't get it. So, they did the next best thing they could. The instant they had the money to do so, they aquired the company that DID get them. Somehow, I dont think "love" was Larry's main motivation here. Of course, you're welcome to have your own opinion, Chris. Then again, you'de probably be canned if you said anything even remotely damaging your company.
C) Thats right. VA owns and controls the things it owns. Andover.net, and everything beneath it, are now corporate holdings. This includes Sourceforge. See, thats why they purchased Andover.net. In other words, they payed money to obtain ownership of it all. I know, wacky concept, isn't it. Paying money means you own things. The reality of it is, VA Linux Systems, at any time, can pull the plug thousands of community projects at its own discretion. They own the boxes, they lease the pipe, they employ the admins. All it takes is a call to one employee to walk over to Above.net and yank the plug out of the wall. With Sourceforge, they now own a little ant-farm called where they can watch bright-eyed kids come up with amazing things that might be of use to the company. If one of ideas is important enough to VA, they'll put people to work on the task full time, under the auspices of "community involvement".. This is precisely what happened with System 12, in my opinion. We were forced off the map the instant we started talking about being a fixture in the Linux community. They couldnt own the idea, so they gave the order to their own full-time employees to replicate it and slap their name on it first before we could even get off the ground. Why else would they have put several of its employees on the task full-time? I'll bet you ten bucks to a goddamn donut the same thing is happening on Sourceforge right now. Someone there , right now, has an idea that could give VA an advantage over their competition down the road. Right now, VA doesnt have to worry about a thing. VA has no competition--They now own their competitors. And when the bright-eyed kids begin making waves about what they're shooting for, they'll get screwed so hard they wont be able to walk straight for months.
The premise that VA purchased Andover.net, Freshmeat, Slashdot, and countless other sites out of the kindness of their own hearts sounds about as laughable as hearing Bill Gates whine about how Microsoft is being denied their "freedom to innovate."
Snap out of it. I'm so tired of your spin and bullshit I could squat.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
i want to preface this by saying that this is not a knock on Rob or anyone else. i'm not here to criticize anything or anyone; i'm just here to make an observation about things.
i went to read this story, and i noticed a funny thing. it's been almost 2 hours, and no one has posted anything of value. i've noticed this a lot as of late... then we see all these repeat stories, stories that beat the same subject to death, and TONS of stories with less than 100 comments... many with less than 75.
then there is the severe lack of intelligent comments as of late... it seems like the only intelligent comments i read anymore are the ones like this one, complaining that things are going down hill... don't get me wrong, ther eare still a few really intelligent people nice enough to explain things calmy, but they seem to be a dying breed.
i think what i'm trying to say is that in the last year or so, the quality of things have been going down hill. this is not a knock at all the hard work that people are putting in, but maybe some of that hard work could be redirected or something.
i just feel like this used to be a place i would come many times a day, and one i would spend a long time on. one that i cared about.... and as of late, i seem to be getting more and more of my news elswhere... i don't even care all that much when i get to moderate b/c i feel like it's not going to make a difference, and the majority of what i read are either not applicable, or flame wars between pseudo-intelligent people. the ask slashdot articles aren't what they used to be, and neither are the news stories... and from what i'm getting in the comments that others are posting, my feelings are not an anomoly. from what i've been reading, i feel like there are a lot of "ask slashdot" stories and regular news stories that i would be *VERY* interested in reading.. and that many others would be interested in as well... but which never see the light of day.
and slowly, little by little, those of us who helped make this site such a great place are starting to go elsewhere.
so moderate at will, my fellow slashdotters. let's see what happens.
p.s. slashdot should really check to see whether their advertisers are legit. due to some horrible unprofessionalism from csoft.net, my destructure.com email address is down. if you want to send me any comments, please use (ack!) my hotmail account at misha128@hotmail.com
i want to live life, not just go through the motions
I never knew this was gone...this is the first time I've heard of it...but I'm glad it's here...one of the problems which makes people less enthusiastic about linux is its lack of games. Granted, these aren't the market killing games out there for other platforms like Diablo or Halflife, but this is a good way to attract attention to the gaming side of linux. I think that a good thing to do would be to start open source gaming projects. It would be a lot of fun, and if enough people got into it, a great game could be created. With the advent of cross-platform gaming libraries, we might be able to see such things.
If youre interested in starting up a group, start one, make games...this is the way linux will succeed...don't sit around saying to yourself that this is what needs to be done, do it...