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Anonymous Will Award $200,000 for Xbox Linux
An anonymous reader writes: "The X-box Linux Project at Sourceforge reports today that an anonymous donor will award nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the individuals responsible for the completion of a two-phased effort to run Linux on the Xbox. One can't help but wonder if this will help or hurt the community. On one hand, it is likely to generate additional interest in the project, on the other, some people may be less inclinded to share their discoveries with money on the line.
Then again, getting both Money and Glory sounds pretty good."
The basic goal of the project is to find a simple and completely legal way to run Linux on the Microsoft Xbox.
Yes, and the basic goal of the MS XBox team will be to find any way possible to prevent it.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
is $200,000 going to be enough for legal expenses when you accept the prize and Microsoft comes at you with all their legal guns ablazing?
xavii aka bob
they should have said "a fifth of a million dollars."
I hope high gas prices are depriving your children, you fucking dumbass.
... if he/she purchased 1000 XBoxes and used them for something that would normally require a $400 Intel based computer.
Xboxes are are priced at $200, but really contain the guts of a typical $450 PC.
A cluster of 1000 Xboxes would be mighty cheap computing power.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
$200,000 from him if you can run linux on it, but them MS will probably pay you $400,000 to keep it hush.
sigh... i guess 1/5 of a million dollars just don't have that "zing" or "cha-chin!" to it...
hell... this is why we have enron scandals... 50 grand short and we are calling it "nearly"
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Microsoft takes a monetary hit on each Xbox sold ($150+ I believe ?), so that would be a really bad idea, because people would be buying them without the intention of using them for games, but rather for porting linux. If people don't buy the games, Microsoft doesn't make back the money it lost on the unit.
I would guess that it's not Bill Gates (at least not for the reasons you gave)
-kwishot
I'd like to see that cash in escrow before I believed anything this "anonymous" donor said.
This is just some speculation on my part. But let's face it, it does make a little sense.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I was thinking of Sony.
Many people are still saying everyone loses money on consoles, but my perception from my readings is that only Microsoft is losing money on console sales right now.
If Linux could run on XBox, Linux games could be developed for it, and they should be easily ported to/from PS2 Linux, right? But PS2 will run Linux without hardware modification.
So an XBox version of Linux (GNU/XBox?) would increase the perceived market penetration of Linux-capable consoles, therefore increasing developer interest, therefore encouraging more console Linux games.
However, since the XBox needs a hardware mod, an end user who wants the new killer Linux console game will be more inclined to buy a PS2.
Plus, if my perception that XBox is the only console still bleeding cash at each sale, this would further hurt Microsoft and benefit Sony.
(Customary IANAL declaration) Since Sony is based in Japan, wouldn't it be more difficult for Microsoft to find a reason and venue sue them if/when it is revealed they are the money source?
This one is easy.
They are anonymous because it is probably id software, or some agent of another big gaming house that is Linux-friendly. They want to run their games on the XBox, but don't want to pay the licensing fees to MS. Instead, he will pay a one-time pop it to some geek, and then make self-booting quake-on-linux-on-xbox
dvds, and do an end-run around Microsoft and their licensing.
Yes but each XBox purchased is another tally to the install base to tought to potential developers. Look guys, we sold 10 million XBoxes, thats 10 million potential customers for your deer fucker, er, hunter game.
THIS again? I've got karma to burn so why not. He who writes the code chooses the license. Get over it. Don't like GPLed code? Don't use it. There are strings attached to commercial SDKs and libraries that are far more obnoxious than the GPL. And I don't see you charging any of Microsoft's windmills.
Most of us here are fully capable of seeing when the GPL is appropriate and when it isn't. For that matter, many of us don't give a crap about RMS' polemics either. The GPL is an often useful tool. Yes it is for some people. Get over it. The last time I checked, I didn't start hemorraging internally the last time I fired up a shell linked against readline. So much for the viral thing.
And no whinging about how it hurts somebody's development business. That is sooo annoying. Any idiot who can't be bothered to read COPYING should be canned anyway. You want the functionality of some GPLed code? Don't like the terms? Tough. Find or write a replacement. This is no worse than the terms on the commercial code you seem so concerned about.
Oh yeah, in case anybody missed it. Not all GPLed code is owned or controlled by the FSF. The GPL lends itself to agendas other than theirs. So spare us the stuff about RMS' integrity or lack thereof. It's a non-issue when one chooses a licence whose properties are certainly well understood by now.
As for that hurt coming to Linux you're so pleased about, do you think that if Microsoft somehow succeeds in driving a stake through Linux' heart that it will cause a migration to BSD code? I doubt it. Once Microsoft scavenges all of the BSD code they have a use for, that development model will be targeted next. That's right. Once target numero uno is taken out (if they can that is), they will come for BSD. Better watch out for the frag damage. Sheesh! RMS is justifiably a target of derision. You don't have to be as well.
Oh yeah, the main point of all this. He who writes the code chooses the license. Licences are merely tools. Can we expect polemics against chainsaws just becuase some psychotics like the mess they can make?
That's a really weird way of saying $200,000: "nearly a quarter of a million dollar"
Damn the hard drive marketing folks. If you figure 1024 rather than 1000, it comes much closer...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
And this is different from the current state of sourceforge how?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Won't the $200K reward encourage greedy developers to hide their work and end up reducing the amount of sharing that goes on?
I'm not so sure about that. It's been my experience that the majority of open source projects are actually coded by a very small number of developers. Projects with widely dispersed development such as Linux or Samba seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
I think $200K could certainly inspire a dozen or so individuals to do what they are already day-dreaming about doing.
Think it through people. Independent game devs are reported to be paying $10 per shipped game in royalties for games developed with the the official XDK. There is plenty of settled case law saying you CAN release a title without paying up and that you can break any obstacles the console vendor throws up, including adding the trademarked Nintindo logo if it is required to get the machine to execute your code. Since it IS settled case law I can think of a few game shops who might be tempted to add that $10 to their bottom line instead of Microsoft. A $200K inventment goes into the black when unit #20,000 of the first title goes out the door, which will be in the initial production run.
Wanna bet BioWare had a secret reason for doing a Linux port of Neverwinter Nights? Or if not them there are a dozen or so equally good suspects. It probably isn't a huge shop that does a lot of console biz though. Screwing M$ out of their royalties would scare Sony & Nintendo that they might be next so there is enough risk that I'd doubt it is somebody on the scale of EA and such.
The big shops need the good relationship with the hardware vendors as new hardware comes down the pipe.
Democrat delenda est
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