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LinuxPPC64 Contest

Posted by Hemos on from the something-to-post dept.

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. "

6 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Apple? by polyhue · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Mentioning PPC gives an Apple topic automatically?

  2. Porting wine? by SeanTobin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Check out number 99. They want someone to port wine!

    Now, porting between OS's on the same architecture is difficult. Porting between the same OS on different architectures can be easy, or insanely difficult. Porting a "not-an-emulator" that "ports" other applications running on a different operating system across a different architecture to run the "ported" application on the non-native architecture... well, the word difficult just doesn't seem to cut it.

    But, if anyone manages to do it they deserve a freakin' medal!

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    1. Re:Porting wine? by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I can do this already. We did a little experiment last year. Using the open source decompiler Boomerang you can turn a windows exe into C code. You can then simply recompile that source code on any platform using winelib including non-x86 platforms like PPC. Of course, you then have to test the app and ensure that it still works, which takes a fair bit of effort as winelib isn't exactly that portable and Boomerang isn't that mature just yet. But it is possible, and it's truely the highest performance way to "run win32 apps on PPC".

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  3. Taxable income? by eric_ste · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know that this is a "contest" but since you kind of get paid (toyota prius) for work (a pice of software that works on PPC), would you include the price as part as your taxable income? What do the IRS people think about that?

  4. What is the award for? by Nuffsaid · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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

    I don't get it. Are they rewarding the project that comes up with the poorest code portability? I always thought that one of the strongest points of Open Source Software is portability across platforms (OS and CPU architectures). Does IBM (in the role of a strong platform vendor) publicly promote going in the opposite direction? It is understandable from their point of view, but not a big help for OSS development, in my opinion.

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    1. Re:What is the award for? by Amiga+Trombone · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't get it. Are they rewarding the project that comes up with the poorest code portability? I always thought that one of the strongest points of Open Source Software is portability across platforms (OS and CPU architectures). Does IBM (in the role of a strong platform vendor) publicly promote going in the opposite direction?

      I'd expect that since most code developed on x86 can be ported to PPC, the opposite is probably true as well.

      But that's the problem - most Linux PPC Linux apps are ports of x86 apps.

      The object here, I think, is to promote PPC as a primary platform for Linux development, rather than a platform applications are ported to as an afterthought.