Slashdot Mirror
Transgaming Bringing Windows Games to Linux (?)
An anonymous reader wrote in to point us to transgaming which is
trying to get the DirectX APIs on Linux, and make it possible to run
DirectX games on our OS. What is perhaps more interest is their perspective on how to get paid for their work. Not sure how I feel about this whole thing.
Does NOONE do any research on slashdot anymore? Look here! *sigh* :-)
And I wonder why my articles keep getting rejected.
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
Transgaming is cool. Read the submission they wrote to the Canadian government's copyright comment process.
basically they want $100,000 and then they will put all of their code back into wine.
20,000 people $5 each, not that much of a problem to me.
They don't want $100K. They want $100K per month. You might not mind paying $5, but paying $5/month is somewhat more significant.
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For the last several years, Linux-based companies have been struggling with the problem of how to make money from free software. The problem, of course, is the difficulty of convincing users to pay for software that can be downloaded and freely copied from the Internet. Instead of paying for the software itself, Linux companies have followed several different business models that amount to charging for ancillary products and support that surround the core software, which remains free. The reasons for the development of these models is clear: Linux, and the majority of Open Source software is in economic terms a "free good", and selling a free good makes about as much sense as charging for air.
At TransGaming, we believe that in order for Linux to succeed with consumers in the long run, we need innovation not only in software development, but also in the social sphere. We need to encourage more user participation in the development process, and give users more responsibility, both financially and otherwise, for the ultimate result. We view our work on two levels: at the software level, we're creating a way for Windows games to run on Linux. At the social level, we're running an experiment in how to create a sustainable economic model for the development of free software that also gives users the incentive to participate more actively in the creative process.
One aspect of TransGaming's model is based on the Street Performer Protocol. We are licensing some of our 3D code under the Aladdin Free Public License, which restricts certain forms of commercial redistribution. Users may freely download and use the software, but will be encouraged to subscribe to our subscription service. We will not release that code under a less restrictive license (such as the Wine license) unless and until we have a paying subscriber base of at least 20,000 users. This means that our work will not be fully incorporated into the main Wine source base before that point. Further development of our work will also be predicated on that subscriber base being sustained. This gives our customers a direct incentive to stick with us - if our subscription revenue dries out, so will our release of new code.
Our customers will have several direct means of guiding the work we do. First and foremost, they will have the right to vote on which game we work on next - giving them control over our development priorities. Second, they can file bug reports to which we will respond within three working days. Users who file high-quality bug reports will not only see their bug report dealt with promptly, but will receive additional voting status, making their votes count more. Users who believe that we're doing a good job can 'tip' us, by subscribing at higher monthly charges - those who do so will of course receive a higher voting status. And finally, users who believe that we're not adequately addressing their needs can tell us so by unsubscribing altogether.
Developers in the community who want to contribute code or bug fixes to the project can do so under the Wine license, since their patches can then be distributed within our current version, under the AFPL, as well as eventually to the main WineHQ tree. Since we're always looking for skilled developers, we may offer regular contributors contracts to work on particular development areas, or games that our users have requested.
Quit whining about whoring... I'm already capped from comments, not providing "mirroring" on Slashdot.woof.
As this page, which includes many demos from Loki, proves, SDL is at least one, fairly easy to learn, free alternative to DirectX. Do we really need DirectX that badly?
Yes, it's been supported and updated all this time. If you're interested in the latest version, check out eComStation. It has excellent hardware support, and thanks to Odin and the soon-to-be-releasedVirtual PC for OS/2, it can also run almost every Windows application (in some cases, apps that Wine can't run).
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/12/30/142723 7&mode=thread
posted by timothy almost a year ago (dec 30 2000).
chromatic writes: "Looks like a company called TransGaming Technologies has been improving DirectX support in Wine. They plan to use a modified Street Performer Protocol to make money, and will eventually relicense their patches under the Wine license. Maybe I'll finally be able to run Thief!" And maybe one day Xbill will run on Windows.
No. winex (apart from the non-Direct3D enhanced standard wine) is your only option on Linux for hopefully relatively usable windows gaming.
Both Win4Lin and VMWare have pretty weak DirectX
support. Not sure whether they'll improve that,
though.