Can Open Source Save Hardware?

Culexus writes "Tom's Hardware has a interesting story about Open Source saving the hardware industry. Pretty good read all in all. Hopefully chip makers and vendors won't have to bend to the iron might of Microsoft any longer." Some good comments on how early-adopters and enthusiasts are being marginalized by the industry, too.

Comments

In Theory

[agent dero]

This should make hardware cheaper, from major manufacturers at least.

Dell, HP, and Gateway all are in pretty deep with Microsoft, to produce Windows PCs. So if the hardware companies don't have to contract with Microsoft anymore, theoretically, the prices should go down, if not the price of Windows XP Professional ($143).

Is this wrong? Or will the big guys continue to rip-off the consumer?

(Note situation in Europe after changing to the euro)

Open Source

[shoemakc]

I've just read the article 3 times and I have to ask; what part of it deals with open source? It's a TH article for christ sakes....are you slashdot editors just reading tag lines now?

Look guys, not everything MS does is an attack on open source. OS might be a threat, but it's hardly their only threat.

-Chris

Re:Boo

[skillet-thief]

That has got to be one of the worst articles I've read.

I agree. I kept flipping through those annoying THW pages waiting for some kind of logical link to the conclusion. I was waiting for him to at least say: "If Linux catches on big time, XFree86 takes so much memory that we will all need huge machines." That might be wrong, but it would have been some kind of point to the whole thing.

As hardware becomes a commodity, places like THW become less and less relevant. Maybe this article is just a sign o' the times.

Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts

[Anonymous Coward]

couldn't agree more - I've been running the evil OS since 3.11 and have been rolling my own boxes since pentiums didn't come with a verson #. Due to that fact I have a steady stream of hardware that gets passed down along my various machines like a shirt in a family with 10 kids.

I still haven't installed XP even though I have a (legit) corporate licence because I know at some point (tinfoil hat time for some but I really believe it) no matter what version I use I'll need to "activate it." No thanks. After sampling a lot of linux distros I'm a Mandrake 9.1 convert and run it on every box in my home network (cept I have windows 98SE on my laptop) BECAUSE of product activation.

In some sick way I'm glad MS came up with the idea so I could find a compelling reason to make the linux plunge.

Re:One thing that upset enthusiasts

[leifm]

Linux needs to do more than improve to gain converts from Windows. Linux needs to offer something that looks really nifty to the average user, not just replicate Windows functionality. The Linux is cheaper argument doesn't work for the average home user either, as they don't generally see the cost of Windows (they either still have the OEM install or they pirate).

Open Source Enabling Gaming Talent?

[r]

Now, if the Open Source movement sees its installed base of desktop users reach a critical mass, it can enable a new generation of game designers, who will be shut out of the existing game industry because there is nothing else for them there.

noble sentiment but, sadly, naive. open source will not help game designers. (to say nothing about leading the next hardware revolution!)

games are extraordinarily expensive to make, but the cost isn't driven up by software. modern games require a team of specialists to build or adapt the basic engine, a very talented team of artists to produce the graphic and sound assets, perhaps a team of level designers and scripters, and of course people responsible for high-level gameplay design - to say nothing of production, marketing, and other people on the business side of the fence. all these people bring their expertise into play, and that ends up being really expensive.

can open source help with this? no, not really.

suppose we live in the best possible world, where all of the software used in game production is open-sourced - all game engines, all physics and AI engines, all modeling tools, all graphics software, everything. even in that world, games would retain high production costs - because the cost of making games is not in the tools, but in using the tools to produce content. what's worse, our world isn't too far from that ideal world - many tools are already open-sourced or otherwise available (quake engine is free, torque is available for minimal costs, some modeling tools are free, etc). you could create a game today using only free tools. but revolutionary new games by garage designers are still nowhere to be found. again, this is not surprising. the cost of making new games is not in the tools, it's in the many man-years it takes to produce a polished game using those tools.

the days of shareware garage games aren't over - people will always enjoy simple games, as the success of snood and cell phone games demonstrates - but they have been permanently demoted to a secondary role in the industry. gamers want well-designed, highly-polished games, and are willing to pay for them. this is not a domain that open-source can assist or compete in.