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Game Over For Sony and Open Source?
Glyn Moody writes "Sony has never been much of a friend to hackers, and its infamous rootkit showed what it thought of users. But by omitting the option to install GNU/Linux on its new PS3, it has removed the final reason for the open source world to care about Sony. Unless, of course, you find Google's new distribution alliance with Sony to pre-install Chrome on its PCs exciting in some way."
Buy a damned computer, or one of the mobiles you can install Linux on.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It didn't sell them any significant number of new PS3's. That they did it for the first generation was fine, but it's not a contract they signed in blood.
RTFA. Sony has chosen not to maintain the Hypervisor for the new hardware. You can still run linux on the old systems, and they do not plan to disable that feature. This isn't open source hate, it's a practical business decision by a company that loses money every time they sell a console. They made the console cheaper.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
... PS3 Slim won't run PS2 discs
I'm in the "open source world".
Should I stop caring about Burger King because I can't run Linux on a Whopper?
They probably realized Linux support buys them little over the Wii and XBox360 despite what I and everyone else thinks.
Xbox 360 has Creators Club and Xbox Live Indie Games, a business model that Apple copied for the iPhone SDK and App Store. What does Sony have to match it?
The big console makers are sort of Tivo-ization to the Nth degree. They give (or rather sell) you these neat computers and then tell you, "Don't worry your pretty little head about them, We will tell you (or rather, sell you) what you can and can't run on them."
Sony was trying to leverage Linux because they are enemies of Microsoft now. They are also enemies of Free Software, though, so it was a half-hearted "we'll just see what happens if we let people do this," situation. Even though they are selling these great, powerful computers, they still insist on controlling the content on them. That hasn't changed, and won't change because the console model requires it.
So, the whole thing where people would rave about Linux on the PS3 didn't make a lot of sense to me. I feel that as far as making use of a console, the SEGA decision to allow the Dreamcast to boot ordinary CDs was a far bigger deal.
The problem is, the hardware from Sony (and Microsoft, and Nintendo) is all locked down to prevent the power user/hacker/programmer from doing what they want with it. The fact that the might allow some locked down version of Linux on there is beside the point.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Just summarize the article, don't whine to me about how you don't like Sony. I am able to evaluate actions they take individually. Rootkit = bad. PS3 not supporting linux = good business decision. They are in no way related to each other since this isn't replacing Linux on the PS3 with a rootkit.
And seriously wake up. If you get pissed at Sony for the dumb things they do, then you probably wouldn't buy a product from anyone if you actually paid attention to all the crap that has gone on in each company's history.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I agree. This quote really made me giggle:
Unless they -- I don't know -- like playing console games, like the vast majority of people who buy game consoles. My microwave oven doesn't run Linux, either, but it somehow manages to still be useful to me.
Honestly, I think out-of-touch rants like this only serve to further reinforce the "Linux zealot" stereotype, and drive the mainstream away from Linux.
All Sony has done is reverted to the status quo for game consoles. The Wii and 360 don't allow Linux to be run. While Sony should be praised for including a (mostly gimped) linux option with the PS3, they shouldn't be condemned any more than Nintendo or Microsoft for not including it. I'm not a Sony fan at all.
There's FAR better things to criticize Sony about.
The hypervisor gave homebrew developers a way to make apps without enabling warez. But now the homebrew community and the warez community are brought back together by the need to find a hack to access the console resources. And once one finds a way in, the other gets it for free, no stopping them.
Linux support seemed like an intelligent way to take a stab at piracy on the cheap, while paying lip-service to Open Source, etc, and getting a tiny amount of street-cred for it. It may be that's not worth the cost to them anymore... we'll see if that turns out to be a mistake or not.
It didn't spark the development push because Sony crippled the ability for Linux to use all of the hardware.
If they wanted to spark development, they should have let the OtherOS have free reign.
Sony didn't make it a challenge. I thought that so at first, but guess what? It was the hypervisor restricting all the access. Hypervisor's gone, all that's left is to hack the firmware to allow installing another OS. If anything, Sony's likely made it easier to get Linux running.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
In the future Sony will refrain from supporting Linux in anything initially, because they get more flack for not supporting it in all models than do other console makers for never having supported it to begin with.
It's this kind of mean-spirited crap that keeps Open Source as generally a second-class citizen on platforms.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nobody uses the PS3 for supercomputing these days. The ugly secret of the PS3 is that its 'extreme performance' was mostly marketing.
Folding@Home maintains a popular PS3 client that is currently used by 31,933 PS3s. The PS3s provide about 26% of the total x86 equivalent TFLOPS available to F@H, although PS3s represent just 9% of the total F@H CPU population.
Let me emphasize that: thirty one thousand, nine hundred thirty three PS3s actively contribute to Folding@Home. That's a long way from zero, my friend.
First, to the story poster, the Sony that made the rootkit isn't the same Sony that makes the PS3. Sony Music made the rootkit, and Sony Computer Entertainment makes the PS3. Yes, same parent company, but two very different divisions. Also, SCE doesn't make Sony computers. Just because the name Sony is common doesn't mean it's the same division, or even the same company. Each division can have vastly different philosophies. So comparing SCE to Sony Music or Sony Computers (whatever the exact company names are) makes for a flawed argument.
Anyway, to me, this story and a number of replies to it smack of open source elitism. You know that's why Windows and Mac users don't much care for us Linux users, right? Open source isn't the be all end all solution to everything. Yeah, I use Kubuntu Linux (Jaunty, to be exact), and I have since December 2006. I'm quite happy with Linux. But I know that open source can't do every single thing perfectly. I use the closed source NVIDIA graphics driver, because the open source version isn't up to par. I use Adobe Flash Player, because Gnash can't hold a candle to the official product (not yet at least; I tried Gnash on Homestarrunner.com and Weebl's Stuff, and the video was much slower than the audio, causing a huge syncing issue). At one point I used the Adobe Acrobat Reader, because the KDE PDF viewers at the time couldn't support editing PDF forms and emailing the results (functionality of a more recent version of Acrobat).
Sony removing Linux support from the PS3 Slim isn't the end of the world. You can still install Linux on the pre-Slim units. My 60 Gig PS3 (now with a new 120 Gig HD) still has the Install Other OS option. I don't use it, because it would be redundant, seeing as how my computer and PS3 are in the same room. But I still have the option. It isn't like the feature is being removed from every PS3 in existence. Besides, I don't understand why someone needs Linux on their PS3 and their PC at the same time. Sure, I can understand the curiosity factor. But I don't see what other functionality you need that the PS3 doesn't have to begin with, or that you can't easily get on your PC.
Dear fuckwad, please learn what censorship actually is and stop calling everything you don't like censorship in an attempt to gain notice, you are just lowering the value of the word and making it so more and more people don't give a fuck when you scream censorship.
Please also learn that it is completely acceptable to every normal person on the planet to censor certain things at certain times, regardless your inability to understand that, or the fact that the world doesn't revolve around you.
It may be "completely acceptable" for you.