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Valve Looking to Port Games to Linux?
Martin Bozic writes "Valve is apparently looking for senior engineers to port games to Linux. They have an ad up on the official site looking for a Senior Software Engineer with experience in 'systems engineering designing and developing communications software and hardware solutions including resolving problems surrounding real-time and non real time PC- based systems using C++ and network programming algorithms and their interaction with physical devices.' One of the lines under the job description is the simple statement: 'Port Windows-based games to the Linux platform.'" No reason to get excited about this before they make an official announcement; while this may eventually mean Half-Life 2 running under Linux, they may just want penguin-based folks to play Peggle.
Why would they be required to do that? Just because they might release software on Linux does not mean that they are in any way obligated to release the source. There is nothing that says that if you write software for Linux you must release the source code. Microsoft could write Office for Linux but they would be under absolutely no obligation to release the source code, and of course we know that they never would. I know that many here think that Linux is synonymous with open source, but in reality open source is not a requirement for Linux.
A few years ago, I spoke with someone from one company that makes astronomy-based software who said that they decided not to release their software in the early days of Linux because of the demand at the time from Linux extremists to release the source code. Please don't scare Steam into the same kind of retraction by suggesting or insisting that they release their code as well. You can be almost guaranteed that Steam would be a binary release, and there's nothing wrong with that.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Server software may run under Linux and the games under Windows.
I hate signatures
Yeah, because it's totally impossible that visionaries that left a company to pursue something greater would be able to see beyond the box they used to work in.
Seriously, how could you even type this without your fingers breaking themselves in disgust before you could finish?
Valve will follow the road that leads to them making more money. That means watching the market and adapting as it shifts. With so much new support for Linux lately (Ubuntu, Dell, HP, ATI/AMD) it would be hard to ignore Linux as a gaming platform. That doesn't mean they WILL decide to write cross-platform games, just that they would be fools to ignore it without reason.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
And just who are you to demand that anyone grant "freedom" to the software that they - not you - spent countless hours coding? Jesus! Is it not enough that people are finally considering releasing their software for Linux? This "all-or-nothing" attitude is exactly why companies like the one that I mentioned refuse to release Linux software -- because of this irrational, self-proclaimed "requirement" of the extreme Linux fringe that companies "free" their software.
You are coaxing a timid animal out of its hole only to start screaming at it when it pokes its head out, forcing it to run back into its hole out of fright. Knock it off, damn it!
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
No, they don't have to release the source. Reminds me of back in the day when I had a large farm of apache servers and a M$ salesman told me if I was running Linux I had to release to source code to my website.
The pragmatic, 'impure' Linux users don't seem to be as vocal. They don't seem to flood message boards with statements of "thats ok, I don't need the source, thanks for supporting my platform anyways.
The very vocal purists seem to paint the picture of the entire community. You also have companies like MS ensuring them that it is worthless to bother with them. After walking into a site on several occasions to find an unpatched windows 2000 server that was also a file server and router that was owned by a lot of different people, I decided to recommend pulling it out, replacing it with a linux box as a firewall/router and then after rebuilding it once again, keep it behind the firewall.
A notes on this, the owners had a rocket scientist for a son in his mid 20's who set this up and maintained the server, I was only called to get them up and going again on several occasions. I know that windows servers, can run on the Internet without getting infected with something or completely pawned. That isn't the point, the point is that no one qualified to make it happen was around the server until after the fact.
Anyways, the normal admin/maintainer started calling me a linux zealot because I mentioned using the *nix boxen as a firewall to protect the windows devices. As if that was a bad thing?. They had an old computer that could have been easily used. He convinced the owners (mom and dad) to put a Dlink wrt54 in as a firewall instead and about cried when I told him it ran linux as the device's base OS. Now, he had to get the idea that linux was bad somehow. He was also studying for his MCSA at the time. He was dead set against linux for some reason and ended up pointing to some comments from the vocal purists to support his beliefs.
I think the MCS* training warned him about linux and he became convinced enough to end up being an MS fanboy. But it wasn't hard for him to show outrageous comments on message boards that appeared with no context in a vein attempt to prove his point. I still laugh when I get a call asking if X behavior is normal. I guess some people take the term using the right tool for the job to a whole new meaning.
I can only imagine that companies looking to support linux have came across the exact same stuff. They have MS on one hand saying this is bad, your computer will blow up and date your wife in front of you, and at the same time, purist will be letting them know that want everything or nothing at all. The pragmatic, 'impure' Linux users don't even get recognized.