Xbox Runs Its First Legal Homebrew App

PineGreen writes: "As Michael Steil, the Xbox Linux project leader says:'On the Xbox Linux website, you can download "linuxpreview," an application that runs on modded Xboxes and is completeley legal, because the XDK was not used for development, and it does not contain any Microsoft code.'. See the X-box logo and Tux on the same screen. More information here."

Comments

Waste of Time

[cyberlotnet]

My only question is Why?

Why waste your time getting linux to run on a Microsuck product?
Why waste time dealing with closed hardware?

If these people really wanted to do the linux community any good there time would be better spent developing a linux gaming console on everyday stock hardware.

I mean really lets think about this..

Do I want to
1. Run a webserver on a Xbox?

2. Run games on a linux box?

Which one makes more sense?

Re:Waste of Time

[terradyn]

Don't you realize the potential of having a cheap web server farm? these boxes are worth 450 or so in hardware and you can get them for less than 200 now. You'd save a huge amount of money using these as linux boxes.

Re:Waste of Time

[cyberlotnet]

These boxes would make shitty servers..

Intel 733 processor with only 128k Cache
Only 64 Megs of ram
5400 RPM Drives With only 10 gigs active
No Standard VGA Port for a monitor

So all in all this would make one SHITTY server, not worth the time and effort for most people..

You would be better off going to walmart and picking up a Lindows computer and using that as a server before you bothered to touch this.

Any geek with the skilz to use this for a server could just as easy build his own system for not much more and it would perform ALOT better as a server then this would.

Re:Waste of Time

[oyenstikker]

Because they want to. They are using their resources to do something they want to do. They don't owe you anything. Open source hackers don't exist to make free software for you. They exist because they like doing it.

(I can almost hear you all gasping.)

To all of you hackers that have influenced and contributed to progams that I use: Thank you!

To all of you hackers that spend your time doing things that I find utterly useless: Have fun!

Not At All a Waste of Time

[donnacha]

What a colossal waste of time.

Hardly. If widespread modding, driven by a quite likely boom in Divx Movie piracy, becomes a reality, Xbox Linux could, no doubt much to the horror of "real" Linux folk, become by far the most popular form of consumer/home Linux.

Sometimes success can arrive in unexpected forms.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Craig Maloney]

Actually I think several unsupported drivers were coded for this effort... It's called the XBox (in total).

Why get all pissy with people who are enjoying themselves and are coding something that could potentially useful? I'm sure folks made similar claims when Linus rolled out his first kernel. "Why a new kernel? What a collosal waste of time! Think of all of the effort that could have been put into writing something for (insert favorite OS from 1993)

That's OK, though. All of us are short sighted in our lives. I used to think the same way about KDE and GNOME. "What collosal wastes of time" I used to think. Fortunately those very talented programmers didn't listen to the naysayers. Now I don't scoff when someone ports Linux to different hardware architectures. Hey, it's their life. Let them have fun with it.

Price comparision

[cyberlotnet]

733/64MEG RAM 10 Gig Drive XBOX $180 at the cheapest

Pricewatch Total for a
Althon 1.2 chip/Motherboard
128 Megs Ram
20 Gig HD
Case
Cdrom
Network Card
$220

Come on people... Spend $40 more get at get real.. The time/money you save not having to MOD/Play to get linux installed plus the extra power makings using a XboX as a serverfarm just plain stupid

Re:Price comparision

[Daytona955i]

Here's why... because they can...

People often ask me why I got a linux kit for my ps2... I only tell them that if they have to ask they wouldn't understand.

Also don't you want to screw Microsoft? In order for Microsoft to make any money (or to break even for that matter) they need to sell something like 30 games per xbox user. (They get about $5 per game) Why? Because they are selling the XBox for less than is costs to make. Now say you can get an XBox and install linux (and not buy any games) and you and your friends all do the same and install linux and have fun with it. Microsoft looses a lot of money because you aren't even buying 1 game for the xbox. Therefore Microsoft looses lots of money on the XBox project and then decide to bow out to Sony and Nintendo. It would finally be a place where Microsoft has failed.

That is what I would do... just to screw MS.

However, those screen shots look kindof hokey and I don't actually see linux booting, just one line at the top. Anyone actually get it to work?

Re:Price comparision

[cyberlotnet]

Lets try this again..
1. Check out motherboard combos for discounts
2. Topic was based on being used as a server.. servers do not need a DVD-ROM drive and a GF2MX

3. The price could be even cheaper if you get a integrated mb/video/network card

Not necessarily

[DABANSHEE]

There are companies that make cd cloning machines, which do all the copying in hardware, no software exists to decipher the track. IE the reader just records into ram a streaming image of the bips 'n blips which is streamed into the burner at realtime (or virtually realtime) & recorded onto the new CD, well something like that.

So the copy is exactly the same as the original, Consequently such hardware CD cloners work even if the original CD is formatted in the HFS, BFS or any other file system type. Even CDs that have been partitioned (want of a better word) & have 2 ISO images burnt onto it, or even both ISO & HFS images on it will burn fine. To the machine its just bips 'n blips.

I've used one of these machines myself. There would be absolutelly no way that a Xbox would be able to tell a original from a cloned CD. As there's no anti-copy protection by-pass measures built in, & as they cant tell the difference between copyrighted & non-copyrighted CDs, owning/making/selling such machines does't break any laws, even if the user does.

Re:Not necessarily

[Fjord]

Hmmm. I'd have to see one of these work. My understanding is that the original discs have something on them that regular discs don't have. In this way original playstation or xbox discs aren't any kind of standard (on purpose), so this machine would have to be tooled specifically to make these discs. It's not a matter of burners not being able to make copies of the data (they can make them perfectly fine, as evedenced by the fact that backups work on a modded console), but that the discs have something special that the console checks for, probably outside of the data range.

Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[AftanGustur]

What kind of world/reality are we living in, where your own software can be anything else than "legal" ??

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[linzeal]

I don't know about you all in E-land but I don't have an encyclopedic memory of every movie made so I go to places where I can peruse at leisure. I go independent, never owned a blockbuster card never will and usually walk there. Emeryville is only lke 2 miles square anyways. E-land is filled with awesome public transportation and entire areas of cities cordoned off from vehicular traffic, we have little things like that here but not much. Stop with your snobbery ;)

Completely legal?

[ultraright]

How exactly is running code on a modded XBox completely legal?

Re:Completely legal?

[alannon]

My guess would be, RUNNING the program itself is not legal, since you need to mod your X-Box to do that, and you 'agreed' not to do that when you opened the box (yes, the whole idea of that is under legal dispute right now), but distributing the program itself is completely legal, since it does not use any copyrighted Microsoft code.

Re:Completely legal?

[dattaway]

Ford released their new line of cars, which gets 200MPG, but can only reach speeds of 80MPH. Technically, there is a way to make Ford's new cars go 160MPH, but their EULA strictly forbids opening the hood for any reason, punishable by 20 years in prison. Doing so could be considered circumventing activity for reprogramming the car. They needed to do this, because their more expensive models feature a software upgrade and brightly colored stickers to make it go faster. You muck around under the hood, you threaten their revenue stream. Many engineers at Ford would starve due to your criminal intentions.

Well, wouldn't you know it, several teenagers who weren't old enough to drive got underneath the hood of their parents automobile while dad was away at work. You see, one family had the high end model, and the other didn't. The kids were intrigued. One thing led to another, and next thing you know they were caught and led to jail. They wouldn't have been caught if it weren't for that spectacular joyride lighting up the street across the town.

The same can be said about an xbox near you. It usually takes a kid about two years to learn enough about a computer system to learn its language and make something useful. Usually, these projects are done by the young who have all the free time in the world. And they would consider it a patriotic duty to be caught too. I remember my first computer, a ZX81. It was 13 at the time and it took a few years before I had the ROM dissassembled and controlling the hardware directly. No documentation, no internet. I'm sure the internet and millions of people from countries all over the world can get together and come up with something.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[dattaway]

Simply refuse the EULA and wipe the useless and annoying default xbox software, replace with useful Linux, problem solved. Surely, they didn't make it so easy...

The only thing I would be worried about is a hardware implimented suicide logic bomb. Let's say Microsoft hid a little calendar watchdog that sends the operating system a special interrupt ever so often, demanding a special answer.

I'm thinking about this from the hardware designer's point of view, if they were smart enough to do this... If the software refuses to honor this request, the watchdog would update the death counter. Let's say they made this counter 4 bits long to be forgiving. When it counts down to zero without being reset, the security watchdog knows for sure rebel scum have defeated the imperial forces. The watchdog then simply sends out some low level hardware instructions through the IO ports for every programmable chip. The logic bombs have been set.

To further obfuscate this event, the hardware could have been designed to trigger the event upon the next power up cycle. Once this state is triggered, the xbox enteres a comotose state and is effectively dead. Or is it? Do they have an option for "factory service" to revive these things? Is the bomb reset by placing a certain IO line at an odd voltage level? Or is it permently latched?

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[91degrees]

No. You see, the thing that most people don't quite understand with the DMCA is that it does not cover all modification of any hardware ever. It merely prevents people from circumventing a mechanism that exists purely to prevent illegal copyright infringement. While the law may be over-reaching, it is not that over-reaching.

For the DMCA to apply, MS needs some evidence that this will allow pirated osftware to run, and that this hack has been done in order to run pirated software.

Unauthorised apps are not neccesarily pirate apps, and in this particular case, copying the application has been explicitely encouraged by the copyright terms and conditions.

If someone were to extend this hack to allow pirated software to run, then Microsoft would have a case. Until that time, they have to live with it.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[dattaway]

So, am I being a DMCA violator for taking the system apart and putting it back together like it wasn't intended? I ask this question, because many people have done odd things like take apart a perfectly good new or used car and assemble it into some crazy artistic, but functional creation to show off to their peers. The same could and will be done to the xbox.

Or does the DMCA only apply to programmable devices? Thanks to the xbox, will it now be illegal for me to take apart my programmable air conditioner and modify it to be a dehumidifier?

I don't know about you, but when I see a product at the store, I look for its other uses too. Can it be taken apart and modified to suit me better? What parts does it have inside to make my other projects more worthwhile? Does the sum of the parts inside make it worth my purchase? Does the $200 xbox have $700 worth of discrete parts inside for my graphics project? Is the black van parked down the street going to bust down my door and tell me There Are No User Servicable Parts Inside and I should be a good consumer and not do what God had not intended for Adam and Eve were commanded to do? That sounds silly. I see an opportunity.

The xbox is my toy. I find the hardware a challenge. Its the worlds greatest technical challenge. Many people run 26 miles to win a race, but the first to crack this puzzle wins and takes a one-time place in history. There can only be one. Who will it be?

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[martyn s]

You can't possibly think that the MPAA's case against 2600 was better than any hypothetical case microsoft can have against this. 2600 wasn't even serving DeCSS, they just had links to it. Sorry, but you're wrong.

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[jareds]

What kind of world/reality are we living in, where your own software can be anything else than "legal" ??

One where your own code is linked against someone else's libraries. The FSF won't let you distribute programs linked against their libraries unless you comply with their license either.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[antirename]

I've always liked the "no user servicable parts inside". At work, I unpacked a UPS with one of those stickers on it. The the battery had gotten unplugged in shipping. Now, if the box had an EULA on it "by opening this you agree not to dissasemble", should I be a criminal? I think that the sticker actually means "people not smart enough to know that the big round things are capacitors or that the large wires going to the tube inside that TV are connected to a flyback transformer should not remove any screws, or they'll wind up in the Darwin awards." I have saved an enormous amount of time and money working on my own hardware, whether that be my pc, my server, or my air conditioner.

Re:nope - read the box

[jakew]

Don't EULAs rely on the (dubious) idea that you are making a temporary copy in RAM, and therefore need permission? If so, surely this doesn't apply to ROM software (executed from ROM, that is). So can a EULA for an embedded device have even the remotest validity? I say not, but I am not a lawyer...