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.

Comments

Re:IF, just, IF

[WidescreenFreak]

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.

Re:Seems unlikely

[Aladrin]

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.