LinuxPPC64 Contest

Robert MacFarlan writes: "IBM is sponsoring a Open Source developer contest for their Linux on POWER (Linux PPC 64) effort. The contest is designed to award and showcase innovative new open source applications that are designed or optimized specifically for Linux running on the PPC architecture. The contest also awards ports of existing applications from a predetermined list. Contest prizes include Segway HTs, Apple Power Mac G5s, and cash awards. "

Comments

Re:Apple?

[remahl]

But it isn't Apple hardware! It's all IBM. It's not even PPC, it's POWER, which Apple doesn't use.

Re:Porting wine?

[TheRaven64]

The Darwine project has winelib running on OS X, and aims to tie QEMU to WINE to allow windows apps to run with the binaries in the emulated environments and the wine calls running on the native platform.

Re:"POWER"

[Seehund]

POWER is an acronym. "Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC", IIRC.

Now go shout at the eejits who shout "MAC" when referring to cute plastic from Apple, Inc. ;)

no no no, June 2005

[acomj]

Read the article. Entries due by June 2005.. Registration Now..

Who is moding around here...???

Re:no no no, June 2005

[Coryoth]

This article appeared in the Apple section early today, then vanished. It has now reappeared in the developers section with most of the old comments (and moderation) still attached.

Why does this matter? Because the first incarnation of the article linked to the previous Linux on POWER contest which closed in 2004 and was simply announcing winners. Presumably the Slashdot editors noticed (who would have thought), pulled it, corrected it, and reposted it. Unfortunately all the comments bitching about it that got (reasonably enough at the time) modded up are also still attached.

Ah well, this is Slashdot after all.

Jedidiah.

Re:Open to US residents only

[dilby]

What page are you reading??? This contest is designed for Open Source Developers world-wide (w/ the exception of Quebec Canada). Please see the official rules.

Re:Taxable income?

[ocelotbob]

Just like game show winnings, the prizes are considered taxable income.

Re:Open to US residents only

[Inigo Montoya]

From cnews.canoe.ca:

"While some companies permit Quebec entrants, many are scared away by unique rules that are mandated by the province's gaming agency.

Quebec is the lone Canadian jurisdiction that requires security deposits, charges fees and enforces strict rules about draws valued at more than $100. Some American states also enforce rules that prevent their residents from participating in contests.

In addition to requiring that all documents be written in French, Quebec's agency charges three per cent of the value of all national prizes, even if a Quebecer doesn't claim a prize, or 10 per cent of the value of a contest run exclusively in the province. The agency collected nearly $1.7 million in fees last year.

In the rest of Canada, large contests are governed only by the federal Competition Act, a broad framework for promotional contests.

"People often exclude Quebec just because they're afraid of these rules and don't really understand them," said Sharon Groom, a Toronto lawyer who represents many advertisers that run contests as a marketing tool.

"They're not actually that bad but a lot of our clients will say we don't want to be bothered with doing this, so they exclude Quebec."

Re:Porting wine?

[TheRaven64]

Wine (and winelib) draws its own widgets, which look and behave the same way the Windows ones do. While, technically, it would be relatively easy to make them appear like native widgets, this would be a horrendous decision for two reasons:

1. It would remove an important visual clue that the application in question is not a native application, and will not behave like one.
2. It would encourage the attitude that having an app running in Wine is `good enough,' and make native ports (with UIs consistent with the rest of the system) less attractive to developers.

Re:give us cheap Linux-based PPC machines

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Though I don't pretend to understand what Apple thinks they are gaining by holding back things like full specs on the airport extreme card in my notebook

They probably aren't allowed to do so by their agreement with Broadcom, the chip's manufacturer. I think you'll find that Broadcom hasn't released open information on any of their products, so their refusal to allow Apple to do so is in keeping with that position.

So the question becomes: why doesn't Broadcom release info to allow Linux users to use their gear? Who knows. Or, why does Apple choose a manufacturer that refuses to play with OSS? That's probably due to a) historical reasons--the stuff is working now, so it's have to be re-engineered using a different source, and b) there's not enough interest for Linux-on-Apple to warrant the change.

But the bottomline is that if Broadcom released their info, Apple would be more likely to follow their lead.

Re:give us cheap Linux-based PPC machines

[glitch0]

The Airport specs aren't being withheld by Apple, it's a Broadcom chipset which is proprietary.
There's a petition for Broadcom to release opensource drivers on PetitionOnline.com.

Broadcom hasn't released open information

[bani]

Broadcom hasn't released open information on any of their products.

not true. not only have they released information on their gigabit ethernet chips, they also contributed drivers to the kernel.

their wireless stuff is another story, iirc broadcom is under NDA due to some of the technology and core logic they licensed from others.