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Geohot Brings Other OS Support To PS3 With Custom Firmware
suraj.sun tips news that hacker Geohot is following through on his promise to fight Sony's removal of the "Install Other OS" feature on the PS3. He posted a video of the work he's done so far that shows a PS3 console booting into Linux. Quoting Engadget: "While it's not available to the public just yet, Geohot's 3.21OO custom firmware will apparently be simple to install and, as you can see in the video after the break, it works just as you'd expect and simply restores the 'other OS' option to its previous place. Geohot even says that the custom firmware might actually enable the other OS feature on the PS3 Slim, but he hasn't yet had a chance to try it out."
That's ridiculous. How many people who stick modchips in their PS2s, etc are doing it because they want to do homebrew stuff?
How many people interested in this 3.21OO firmware are likely to install it to restore the "Other OS" functionality vs those who would install it if it meant a gateway to playing copied games?
Even if you completely disregard the fact that people jailbreak/unlock/hack stuff to avoid having to pay for games, and that the ability to do these things probably leads to increased sales of the console itself, it's debatable how much money Sony actually make from each PS3 sold - I would presume that the real money comes from the licensing for the games. Consoles themselves have been a loss-leader for years.
Your halcyon belief that "Other OS", homebrew or whatever somehow makes hackers or others that rely upon hackers more altruistic is just plain dumb, sorry. Money talks at the end of the day and if "Other OS" ends up being a gateway to not having to pay $80/£40 for the games you can sure as shit bet those same hackers would work towards that goal.