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

Needs signing from Microsoft?

[bolind]

From the page:

>This is the first legal homebrew application!
>Of course you will need a modded Xbox.
>Microsoft, could you please sign this application?

What does this mean? Does an unmodded Xbox contain a list or some other sort of checking mechanism that only allows certain programs to run on it?

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Fjord]

It comes down to assurance of quality. Downloading off of Kazaa can be a real let down and for files of this size can also take several days (because the people who have them sign on and off). I live a block and a helf away from a Blockbuster, so maybe I should say *for me* it's more convinent, but I'm not the only one I know who prefers this method: my exroomate (at a different place very far from a blockbuster) would rent about 20 games at a time and then copy them and return them the next day. Maybe downloading 1 ISO is easier, but 20 is a pain.

A funny story: the another roomate in the same place was into ISOs on IRC. Someone in the channel had a rare Japanese market game ISO. My roomate asked the guy what he wanted. The roomate then copied his windows swap file to whatever.iso (where whatever was the name of the game the guy wanted). They then swapped "ISOs". A day later our firewall was DOSsed. We figure the guy didn't take too kindly to the trade :)

Re:Waste of Time

[totallygeek]

My only question is Why?

I have often wondered why Linux has been ported to just about even processor under the sun. I have thought it was such a waste because that intelligence could be making Linux better for platform processors more supported. However, I have seen this as a great way to draw interest to Linux. It has become an attention getter -- I mean, who has a Microsoft Windows watch? Plus, most of the people working on these side projects are strongly focused on other Linux ventures, and these make nice breaks in their daily grind of coding. Most of all, though, it revives that hacker spirit some have lost -- make something work against all odds; learn the system in and out; and, do the impossible!

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[ObviousGuy]

As for the hardware, there isn't anything new on the box except for the graphics chip and in this hack they don't seem to have done much changing of that driver (or OS, for that matter).

I don't disagree with what you said, but I think that such blind optimism in regards to new hacks must be tempered. There must be some point at which one must be able to differentiate between something good and something that is merely a waste of time. You wouldn't say to someone who has a PhD in Physics that they were doing a good job if they decided they wanted to prove Kepler's laws of planetary motion. It's simply something that's already been done, the amount of insight that the person will contribute to the whole of physics will be minimal. It is at this time that you ought to tell them (assuming you had the authority, which in the Free Software arena means everybody) that their time could be spent doing better things.

Hey, it's their life, why don't we encourage them do something worthwhile and chastise them when they do something lame?

Re:Waste of Time

[chabotc]

Well thats a simple question to awnser. Depening on your intrests you might want to:

1) Make a microsoft sponsored linux box / workstation (they loose money on the hardware, so what could be sweeter!)

2) Make a microsoft sponsored DVD / MPG / DivX / MP3 player

3) Make a microsoft sponsored Top set box

4) Make a nice quiet, cheap, fast enough, linux web / email / ftp server / etc, sponsored by microsoft!

5) All of the above? ;-)

Personaly i can not wait. The xbox is nice and small, and still relativly quiet. I think my first use for it will be to hook up a (usb?) network to it, and use it to play movies and mp3's from my server on my tv, saving my self the hassle of having to drag around notebooks or dedicate a big, ugly noisy pc to that function.

Then hook up a nice wireless usb keyboard w/ intergrated trackball, and do a full screen galeon to create a nice web surfing / topset box experiance from the comfort of my couch.

Then maybe hook up all the posible home automation gimics to a nice interface thru the xbox / tv, and be able to control my house from my tv?

Then, install some tv cards on my server, and pipe its output to the xbox .. posibly extend with those nice linux mpg recording programs to make my own tivo style setup

Also, I wonder if my current colocation facility will accept xbox's ?

Man, the posibilities are endless, for a little under 300 bucks (and going down) and the sheere thought of microsoft sponsoring my linux projects, it's worth every bit of effort these developers are putting in to it!

Re:Waste of Time

[Psiren]

Why am I wasting my time writing an email client when so many already exist? Because I enjoy it, and have learnt a lot from it. If you're not programming for money, what other reasons do you need than those?

Isn't that a contridiction?

[CMiYC]

" an application that runs on modded Xboxes and is completeley legal"

I'm pretty sure the EULA for the XBox hardware states that you can not modify it and that you can only run authorized applications (games) on it. That being the case, how is this "completely legal"? It seems to me that in order to be completely legal, the software would have to have the proper license from Microsoft in order to run.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Does anyone else find it funny that this guy took his hypothesis and within a couple paragraphs came to believe it as fact? Then wondered how one could fix it?

How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Peahippo]

This places Open Source on their equipment and that just looks bad for Microsoft. I say "looks bad" in the MSian view of closed technology and monopolistic control of same; kind of an ego thing. Paranoia strikes me, but in such cases of legal precision, IANAL who specializes in corporate software defense.

Is there some way MS can paint the event as an illegality of some sort, just to get some court action? After all, they have the rafts of lawyers, and the geeksters don't, so once again the rare and elusive justice can be mis-served by bankrupting the opponent. How about: placing another OS on the XBox constitutes "intent to violate copyright" since obviously you will be after all those game DVDs. The DMCA allegedly forbids circumventing copy protection, so perhaps all MS has to do is get a judge or jury to believe that these 1337 h4xx0r5 were aiming in that direction.

Just curious. I never ask myself if I'm being paranoid -- instead, I ask if I'm being paranoid enough.

Re:Waste of Time

[cfish]

Exactly! For the fun of it. Not many people believed that Linux would have made it in the mid 90's, but everyone was happy to waste hours and hours on it anyway.

I feel that this is the biggest difference between the open source spirit and communism - that an open source developer only serves his/her own interest, but a communist is contributing to the group. The former motivates; the later does not.

If you can smash pie on Bill Gate's face as a hobbie, wouldn't you be happy to spend hours and hours doing it?

Re:Price comparision

[cfish]

One thing though. Microsoft is losing less than 1 billion dollars on XBox so far. But Microsoft have some 47 billion dollars of cash on hand.

1 billion / 150 = 6,666,666

That is, if 6 million geeks go out, throw in $200 hard earned cash and purchase one Xbox without buying any games, MS will lose about 1 billion, which really doesn't sting much for Bill Gates. However, the mod chip is likely to do hefty damage because you can bet that 1 out of each 2 Xboxes sold will be modded and it signals that the prospect of profit is dim.

Now look at Linux and BSD. No one needs to throw in $200 investment to slap Microsoft in the face.

But then again, a DivX-VCD-mp3CD set top box sounds like a nice idea. When we come up with even more worth idea for Xbox, I hope the hack will be ready.

Any creative method to screw Microsoft in every possible way is satisfying and I root for those Xbox hackers... on the sideline that is. I hope that I can get an Xbox for $5 next year to put next to the Microsoft Bob CD.

Private property

[dmaxwell]

Maybe because once I buy something then it's mine. Period. End of story. We aren't talking about some sort of nebulous "intellectual property". An XBox is a physical good. If I'm not using it to play copied games then not even the DMCA remotely applies. They are getting full access to their own personal property and no one who holds copyrights on the contents of a Linux distro cares either.....as long as the changes to GPL stuff is released anyway.

Incidentally, this is how to torpedo them in any propaganda wars. No ultra conservative Republican is going to come out against private property. Once the money changes hands, it is the buyers property.

Re:Not necessarily

[DeadMeat (TM)]

In the case of PSX discs, they are intentionally burned with errors. Assuming your CD copier doesn't barf on the errors, your CD copying software will probably correct them for you. Then when the PSX boots, it reads the disc, finds no errors, and refuses to run the game.

It doesn't take a special drive to copy PSX discs -- just software that will do raw copies of CDs, a CD/DVD-ROM drive that can do raw reads, and a CD burner that can do raw writes (which is most of them nowadays). You don't need special media, either, aside from the fact that some PSX models have lasers that "like" the material of some CD-Rs better than others.

I'm not sure about the X-Box, but it probably has a similar copy-protection scheme. IIRC it also has the requirement that all software be digitally signed by Microsoft to try to stop unlicensed games. (To further discourage unlicensed game-making, legit X-Box DVDs are also burned "backwards" -- that is, instead of going from the inside of the disc to the outside it goes in the opposite direction. I'm not sure how, if at all, this affects copying, since I doubt a raw copy cares what direction it's being done in.)