No duh Gabe.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=29513

"I think [PS3 is] a waste of everybody's time," he said. "Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits."

"There's nothing there that you're going to apply to anything else. You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created. I don't think they're going to make money off their box. I don't think it's a good solution," he continued.

-Gabe Newell

On one hand the argument does make a lot of sense. Gabe is of course talking about the Playstation3's hardware. While it is powerful, it is also complex.

What grates on my nerves is that there is another good reason why Gabe and Valve have such problems developing for the Playstation3.

The Playstation3 uses Linux and OpenGL. Vavle has deliberately avoided developing for either technology and only recently posted a position for an engineer to help port games to Linux. There, is thus, from my point of a view, a decided lack of people within Valve who are equipped to work with the Playstation3 to begin with.

To try to put this in perspective, this is like going to a motorcycle repairman for a problem with your car. Yes, both vehicles have wheels, and both have engines. Typically cars and motorcycles both have seats and both have sets of gauges to tell about the internal performance of the engine.

They are, however, two completely different machines with very little in common.

The same holds true between the Playstation3 and the Windows based WindowsXP and Vista, and the WinNT5 kernel based Xbox 360. It takes a different skillset to work with each product, and from my viewpoint, Valves hiring history means they don't have very many people with the skillset to work on the Playstation3.

So it's a no duh argument from Gabe Newell. Sure, the Playstation3 is complex, but there'd be a lot more wiggle room to make complaints if Valve games and Steam already were out on Linux. With no Linux client? Gabe really doesn't have much room to be speaking on the Playstation3.

Why DirectX is a multi-million dollar mistake

This is a follow-up to a recent post where I copied in contents from a post from the Cedega forums. While I've covered this topic before with a post about an ExtremeTech interview, I think I need to give this topic it's own post.

Okay, the idea is that Microsoft's DirectX is not a viable choice for developers as using DirectX will cost publishers millions of dollars to code around or with DirectX. First, we do need to set some history for what DirectX is, and what DirectX does.

DirectX, as I understand it, is the universal name for Microsoft's interconnection technologies. With Disk Operating System (DOS) items like printers, sound cards, and graphics cards had to be explicitly coded into programs. So if you went out and bought a Voodoo Grpahics card... you could only use applications that specifically had Voodoo Support coded in. If you bought an HP printer, you could only use the printer with applications that supported the printer directly.

Back the DOS days users had to carefully match software and hardware.

To their credit Microsoft was one of the first vendors, if not the first vendor, to try to break the hardware and software matchup. The Direct API was one of the first attempts at creating an underlying bridge between the hardware and the software. Hardware such as printers and graphics cards talked to the Direct Protocols, which in turn talked to the OS. Software talked to the Direct Protocols, which in turn talked to the hardware.

Thus users were freed from having to match specific hardware with specific software. That HP printer not working? Replace it with a Cannon.

As time went on the DirectX graphics portion took a greater emphasis. Currently updates to DirectX generally emphasize graphics support, although running the command dxdiag shows that the Direct protocols have a hand in Networking, Sound, and I/O operations.

The only competitor DirectX has in graphics is the OpenGL standard. OpenGL was originally created by SGI if memory serves, and is the default rendering API used in high level movie studios. Remember the computer generated special effects in Star Wars? That's OpenGL. Seen a Pixar movie? That's OpenGL. Seen a Dreamworks Animation movie? That's OpenGL.

Played DoomIII? That's OpenGL. Played Quake4? That's OpenGL. Played a Playstation3 game? That's OpenGL. Played a Wii game? Chances are it was built with OpenGL shaders. Played Metroid Prime? Yes, that is reported to be OpenGL as well.


So, DirectX is a competent product... and OpenGL is a competent product... why is DirectX development costing developers and publishers millions of dollars... but OpenGL is not?

Answering that question involves having to take a look at the entire graphics market, and forgetting commodity x86 and x86-64 hardware.

Fact is, DirectX graphics only work on Microsoft platforms which are a decided minority outside of x86 and x86-64 commodity hardware. Microsoft has less than 2% of the Cellphone / smartphone market. Microsoft based PDA's have similar low percentages of market penetration. DirectX only works on 2 game consoles.

DirectX 10, which offers Shader Model 4.0 support is only supported on the Microsoft Vista release.

So, if developers or publishers build with DirectX they lock themselves into a very limited number of platforms. This generally is not a problem for specific game developers like Bungie who have little, or no, intention of taking their products to other platforms.

But for major publishers like EA, Activision, and Midway? DirectX is a costly maneuver.

Thing is, OpenGL shaders can be run across all existing major platforms, from Cellphones and PDA's up to massively powerful home consoles like Playstation3 and Xbox 360. As I read existing Kronos's documentation on the OpenGL API, it seems to be a fairly trivial task to convert from Shader Model 2.0 to 3.0 to 4.0.

At first glance this does seem like a fool argument. Unreal Tournament III is not going to on CellPhone/PDA hardware, it needs something with some serious horsepowers. Same thing used to be said about Doom... yet I'm seeing Doom pop up on Cell Phones now. IDSoftware is also examining turning Quake 3 Arena into a browser accessed game.

So... lets pose this question. In 8 or 9 years... what's to say that UT3 will be as UT'99 is today? Can you imagine a version of UT3 ported to a successor of the DS? Without having to re-write the graphics code?


The cost of using DirectX over OpenGL is highlighted even more by the release of Microsoft Vista. Consumers who bought graphics cards with Shader Model 4 support have been continuously told that Shader Model 4 visuals are only available on Microsoft Vista.

Untrue. Software written to Shader Model 4 using OpenGL... will have the same visual presentation on any system that supports OpenGL.

The result is that a developer and publisher only have to write code once, to the OpenGL API, and the OpenGL Compiler written into the graphics driver will take care of the rest.

The added advantage to using OpenGL as the API over DirectX is that publishers are released from Microsoft platform releases only. Hiring developers to port to other platforms like Playstation3 Linux, Wii, x86 / x86-64 Linux, and Apple OSX is no longer a necessity. One code base, one release.

That's where the millions of dollars of savings comes in. One of the major reasons why x86 / x86-64 Linux gaming hasn't taken off is the cost in porting graphics code over. The actual game engine is generally ported over, if not written natively since Linux offers a much better server platform.

But... by using OpenGL... publishers and developers can remove the headaches of supporting Microsoft Vista and Windows Xp... while at the same time opening up a userbase of over 30million desktop users.

So... as I said, DirectX is a multi-million dollar mistake developers and publishers cannot be making.

******

Now... I will say this. I would not mind in the least Microsoft punching me in the nose by releasing DirectX 9 under GLPv2... which would easily fix the whole multi-platform issue.

Figuring out the date of CE.ME.NT

Someone recently posted a link in a forum that lead to a site making a Windows CE.ME.NT. joke with Microsoft Vista. Well, just how long have we been seeing Windows CE.ME.NT jokes?

Well, Windows NT 4.0 was released on July 29 in 1996, so that's our starting point for the NT jokes.

Windows ME had already been named as early as 1997 under the tag Windows Millennium Edition. Originally Windows ME was supposed to be a consumer oriented (read : pretty) version of Windows NT5. In 1999 Microsoft realized that their re-spin of Windows 2000 Professional was not going to make it out the door in 2000. Another revision of the Windows 9x branch with the new media components from the existing Windows ME project was planned. The new project was given the name Windows ME as it could be out on the market by 2000.

Sort of a side FYI the original Windows ME project made it out the doors in 2001 as Windows Xp. Windows Xp Service Pack 1 and Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 4 are the exact same operating system having been synced up for security and development purposes. Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 5 was supposed to keep Win2k Pro in line with Windows Xp SP2. However, Microsoft canceled Service Pack 5 to try and drive sales of Windows XP licenses. Didn't work from my viewpoint.


Anyways, so we have a date of 1997 set for when ME and NT were in place... so how about CE?

I can't find an accurate launch date for when Windows CE 1.0 was released, but I can give the launch date of the Sega Dreamcast. It appeared on November 27 in 1998 over in Japan. One of the high points of the Dreamcast for developers was the availability of a Windows CE development kit alongside Sega's development kit. Since Sega had been working on the console since at least 1996, we can presume that Windows CE was around in 1996 and 1997.

So, both Windows CE and NT were probably around before 1997. The Millennium Edition codename which appeared in 1997 would mean that the first Windows CE.ME.NT. jokes could appeared that year.

And yes. I spent way too much time thinking about this.

Congrats Newegg. You've managed to give me a bad experience

http://www.mepisguides.com/saist/newegg-printer-shipment/Newegg-Pinter-Shipping.html



Just a small sample picture of the first legitimately bad experience I've had from Newegg.com

Microsoft and Bungie Split is a BAD thing.

As it is now official that Microsoft and Bungie are splitting ways I'm starting to see editorials and analysis popping up trying to spin the split as a good thing.

No. It isn't.

The split indicates exactly how bad Halo has been in terms of long term sales for Microsoft. Yes, Halo tends to turn a huge sale over its first few weeks of sales, but what about long term sales? What about sales to other platforms besides the Xbox?

thing is, Halo has flopped everywhere else but on it's initial launch on it's initial platforms. Halo 1 for Windows was a critical flop and a retail flop, and the restriction of Halo 2 to Microsoft Vista caused it's release to flop in retail sales as well.

On Nintendo platforms it is not uncommon to see titles like Mario, Metroid, and Zelda still selling in top 20, or even top 10, lists 6 months, 8 months, even over a calender year past release. Considering the genuine phenomenon that is Pocket Monsters, or Pokemon.

Sony isn't a stranger to the long term sales. Consumer demand for Ratchet has sent Insomniac back to the drawing board for another Ratchet Title, and the recent departure of a high level exec for Naughty Dog to Ready at Dawn re-kindled questioning about the status of another Jak and Daxter title.

So, No. Halo is not a phenomenon. Halo is a hyped product, end of story. It is an average title. There is no Halo Effect. There is a Hype Effect.

Now, if Halo had been the genuine phenomenon that Microsoft has paid press to portray the product as, then there isn't any way that a split would occur. Microsoft could easily make it worth Bungie's while to remain on direct payroll.

As I see it, Microsoft is pulling the same stunt with Bungie that Nintendo pulled. Remember when Nintendo dumped Rareware? How many titles had been profitable from Rareware on the Gamecube? How many titles had been delivered on time?

Answer? Only one title was delivered by Rareware, and it came late.

Nintendo dumped Rareware like a bad habit, but also left open the licenses so that Rareware could continue producing content for Nintendo systems.

Microsoft, in the same way, is pushing Bungie out the door. Halo isn't a long term viable franchise for Microsoft, and Microsoft knows that. Microsoft, therefor, is distancing itself from Bungie... but in the same way Nintendo distanced itself from Rareware. Sure, if a good product somehow does come out of Bungie, Microsoft doesn't want to be completely out of the loop...

But by loosing direct day to day control of Bungie, Microsoft has given the company enough room to hang itself.

Speaking for myself, I await the average gamers revulsion when Bungie starts releasing products on their own.

Nintendo's Wiimote Jacket : Playing Nice?

Recently Nintendo has extended an offer to ship to all Wii owners, free of charge to those owners, plastic jackets for their Wiimote's. Given that the Wii is fast approaching it's first birthday, why would Nintendo risk a possibly cost of $17.4 million or greater in order to send the jackets out?

Is Nintendo going after the brisk market of Wii controller gloves that BD & A currently sells? Not likely, BD & A's gloves come with a $10 price tag. The official Wiimote jackets are also a rather ugly clear plastic, or at least the pictures of the official Wiimote jackets are.

Right off hand the move is a great Public Relations Move. Nintendo has come under fire repeatedly over the past several months from quoted consumer interest groups worrying about the safety of the Wii's motion based hardware. There have been quite a few comic artists and news agencies that have poked fun at the possibility of putting a Wiimote through a TV screen. As best as I can tell, none of those comic artists or news agencies have ever laid hands on a video game console before. There are hundreds of games out there that will make players want to put a controller through a TV, and many that have.

So, the Wiimote Jacket is a token offering, that Nintendo is somehow concerned with user safety. It won't shut the consumer interest groups up, but it is my opinion that anything short of duct tape won't shut some of the consumer interest groups up.


The Wiimote jacket is also a good move on Nintendo's finances. As is well known, everything Nintendo does right now is calculated to drive a profit. From the first Wii unit shipped out, Nintendo was earning a profit on the unit.

The effective cost of the plastics jackets probably fits within the calculated cost difference between the Wii's actual hardware price coupled with taxes and import costs, and the general selling price (Australia need not apply).

Thus, while the Wiimote Jacket offer has the potential to put a dent in Nintendo's finances, even accounting for the past 10 to 11 months of sale, the calculated profit from each console should be enough to cover jacket production and shipping, never minding the profits from the Nintendo DS system, and the profits from games.

So, the move is a good PR move for Nintendo, it's a smart financial move, and it's not really going after the 3rd party market for controller gloves. With the only pictures of the jacket showing clear plastic versions, colorized gloves are still attractive in the eyes of the consumer looking to tell their Wiimotes apart.

No Intel Does NOT own physics.

One of the major events in gaming recently involved Intel buying out Havok. Havok is a company that specializes in computational physics, and is widely used in commercial retail games. Havok generally charges thousands of dollars for their physics software, and it is a competent solution. The only direct competitor Havok has is AGEIA, which is a hardware manufacturer. AGEIA's physics software is gratis, they make their money off of selling dedicated physics hardware.

Where this gets interesting is Physics on GPU. Both Nvidia and AMD/ATi had projects underway using HavokFX, a version of the Havok physics engine accelerated by GPU computations. Several doom and gloom analysts are worried that Intel's purchase of Havok will make it difficult for Nvidia and AMD/ATi to pursue Physics on GPU, and that Intel has already locked in the market for their upcoming add-in graphics cards. If you want Physics on GPU, you'll have to go with Intel. If you want the best Havok physics... you'll have to buy Intel.

Well, I've already been over Intel's chances of making a decent graphics card before. Graphics have been ancillary to Intel for literal years, and I don't think Intel has the development staff or engineers to compete with AMD/ATi and Nvidia.

That, however, isn't the gaping hole in the idea that Intel owns physics.

http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/


That... is the gaping whole in the idea that Intel owns physics. AMD is opening up the specifications for how their graphics cards actually work. Now, if you know how a graphics card works, and if you have access to the BIOS/Firmware, which in AMD's case developers do have access, what's to stop using the Graphics card for items other than Graphics?

As I see it, Intel's purchase of Havok was in direct retaliation for AMD opening up the specifications and BIOS for AMD graphics cards. Intel sees the scenario I am about to lay out and did what they could to upset it.

With the specifications for the graphics card in hand, what is to stop AGEIA from optimizing their Physics Software Developer Kit to leverage AMD/ATi hardware? Presuming that Nvidia wakes up and opens their specifications and BIOS as well... what's to stop AGEIA from leveraging Nvidia hardware?

The following is something that I sent ATi last year... in 2006. This was sent before the merger between AMD and ATi was announced... now... after the merger and after the opening up of the specifications and the BIOS... these questions take on a whole new light.

been reading through the reports from Computex about ATi and the Asymmetric Physics Processing and I was wondering... In the Hypertransport Specification 3.0, part of the specification dictates an external cable link which allows for boxes outside the computer to connect directly into the Hypertransport internal links. Also, AMD recently announced Torrenza, an internal connection technology to allow internal devices direct access to Hypertransport links on the motherboard itself.

Some of the rumblings I've seen from Torrenza specifically involved AGEIA using the Torrenza platform to connect their physics processor to the system. Would it be possible to utilize a re-purposed R5xx GPU in the same manner and directly connect the GPU right into Hypertransport for direct access to the system? If that is possible, would ATi also consider utilizing re-purposed GPU's and selling them in external boxes using HyperTransport Link cables? While I realize that external HyperTransport interfaces are not yet in production, I also must note that motherboards using 3 PCI x16 slots are not very widespread either, so both types of connections have time to grow.

The argument I would make to manufacturers in reference to including an external HyperTransport cable link is that most users are not comfortable with opening their computer up and adding components. While I have little doubt that Asymmetric Physics Processing with Crossfire would sell very well in the high end gaming segment, thats only, what? 5%? Maybe less? of the available market that is actually sold to? I would think that these users, if given the opportunity to buy an external box that plugs into the computer and immediately creates a performance difference, would probably buy the product. Re-purposing older x1600 gpu's, as mentioned in the tech brief, to external HyperTransport boxes might be a revenue stream that I don't think I've seen any manufacturer or hardware developer actively look at for the home market. I think this would also be of interest to the Hometheater market, as well as student markets, which may not have the physical space to put a full tower. Speaking for myself, I know there's no way I could fit 2 double slot graphics cards and a 3rd card into a MicroATX case.

I've also seen some rumblings going around about using GPU's to process sound commands, which leads me to pose this question: Presuming that GPU enabled physics take off and are must-haves for the mass user. Lets say that both AGEIA and Havok get behind GPU enabled physics. Lets say that in one years time everybody is using GPU enabled physics or needs to use GPU enabled physics, or have a dedicated PPU inside the case. AGEIA partially tackled the problem of getting hardware physics to consumers by releasing on the aging PCI slot. Granted, it's slow, really, really, really slow, but just about every computer built and shipped today has a standard PCI slot. Has ATi considered allowing manufacturers like PowerColor and Sapphire to release PCI versions of current cards that could be re-purposed for physics use over the PCI bus? Has ATi considered building versions of Radeon Xpress that would support an AGP slot for the expressed purpose of using the AGP card to accelerate physics?

Are there also considerations to release Physics ONLY cards that strip items like the RAMDACS, display ports, and other items from the card needed for the visual display itself? In such a scenario the physics only cards could sell for less than their visually enabled cousins. That would help clear GPU inventory, and GPU's that didn't make the cut to be used in graphics could be binned to be put into a physics only card. If a physics only card has been considered, going back to the question about processing sound commands, has ATi considered releasing cards that have two re-purposed GPU units? For example, an x1600 unit stripped of visual display for physics, and an x300 GPU for processing sound? Or have there been considerations to add Sound support into Asymmetric Physics Processing and have the Physics GPU also handle sound processing?

While I understand that most of these questions are probably going to be met with the typical "I can't comment on that at this time," part of me hopes that at least some of these items have already been circulated through ATi.

Okay... so what would prevent AGEIA from using the GPU specifications to port their physics SDK? What would prevent PowerColor, Sapphire, XFX, Leadtek, or any other hardware vendor from re-purposing older chips onto stripped cards just for physics acceleration?

No. Intel doesn't own physics, and since I know that ATi has had this brought up before, I do not doubt that somebody in AMD/ATi is already thinking about this.

*Gives Illiad a GREAT BIG HUG*

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20071003

But overall I'd rate Halo 3 as just okay. Nothing Special.

Major. Major. Major PROPS to Illiad for having the guts to post that. But, then again, I've been saying that anybody who has played Metroid Prime 3 is wondering what the big fuss over Halo is about. Its sorta of... I don't want to say rewarding... but refreshing to see other people finally stand up and declare that Halo is just an average game. It's competent yes... but it ain't Half Life... it ain't Unreal... it ain't Quake or Doom, it certainly ain't Metroid... and Bungie is never going to have the development team to stand up to Retro Studios, Epic, and IDsoftware.

Anyways, while all of the people who bought Halo 3 are wondering what do they do now... I'm going to go back and play Metroid Prime 3. It actually does something new.

Cedega : try to NOT piss off your community

The following is a modified version of a post run on the Cedega forums. The original poster ran a post that Cedega was losing it's paying subscribers, and most of his arguments were based on Blizzard's World of Warcraft

*********

I find myself agreeing in some aspects. While I personally find World of Warcraft to be watered-down and mass marketed to Ubuntu and back, it is the 900lb gorilla that opened a lot of doors for real Linux usage among desktop users.

Part of me feels a bit bitter about City of Heroes / Villains. The game is supposedly supported by the Cedega dev team, but it's been ages since the patch that broke Win2k compatibility and there hasn't been any public word or documentation on a fix for the game.

Also tied to CoH/CoV is MSXML and .net support. These technologies are going to be required for support of the NCSoft Unified loader... and NO, Mono is probably NOT the freaking answer to this. Mono technology MIGHT be the answer if merged properly into the Cedega engine.

What irks me most is that these technologies shouldn't even be up for vote, nor support for the NCSoft Unified loader. Yet, not only are these technologies placed in a voting list, substantial number of Cedega users are voting AGAINST these technologies.

MSXML
-2: 4.93% (18)
-1: 1.37% (5)
0: 74.79% (273)

.NET
-2: 7.4% (27)
-1: 2.19% (8)
0: 58.36% (213)

NCSoft Loader
-2: 16.71% (61)
-1: 2.47% (9)
0: 55.89% (204)

******

So, from a voting point of view, a few people seem dead set to work against improving the Cedega Technology.

Anyways, moving on, other aspects that irk me are the lack of developer reports, and lets face it, what kind of catnip has Wulfie been smoking? I hate to break this to developers and publishers, but I have. Bringing games to the market using DirectX technologies is a Million-dollar mistake developers CAN NOT BE MAKING. Porting games to other platforms that do not use DirectX (e.g. Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, Linux, Mac) involves having to pay developers to either port the code or re-write the engines. If developers used OpenGL and OpenAL from the start, they can go across ALL platforms, even down to Cell phones and mobile devices like the Playstation Portable without a significant reinvestment into porting.

(I've been over this in this blog before when I took ExtremeTech out to the woodshed)

Cedega is in a unique place to give empirical evidence to publishers and developers that Microsoft's DirectX is a BAD business move for games. I don't see, or hear, them doing that.

I'm also a little grumpy about Cedega's documentation on the Cedega 6.03 release. I'd REALLY love to know what brand of catnip the dev team was on to state that ATi's drivers were broken and Nvidia's were not. Sorry. Nope. Nvidia is the one with the broken drivers.

*********

Now, I'm NOT saying that a simple posting on the main site saying something to the effect of "We are busy working on the EA games for the Macintosh and we need to put Cedega development on Hiatus until we finish" would have fixed the ill-will that has been, and IS being, generated.

(as a small note, the EA games were made available within the past couple of weeks, so a developers crunch to get them out the door makes a bit of sense)

But come on. Take a look at the website. Half the links are still broken on the transgaming site. Cedega sections still link to transgaming sections.

We don't see anything, and that is for one, making me more hesitant to paint Cedega and Transgaming in a good light. If anything, it's making me wonder why I even bothered promoting Cedega in the first place.


********

Another almost personal problem I have is strange feeling the Cedega devs are content to let me handle the support requests and respond to off the wall votes. For a while my response to technical problems on the Cedega Support requests was faster than any official Cedega rep. I am NOT being paid by Cedega, and it grates on my nerves. Okay, it's just a feeling and I couldn't prove it was intentional... but in the case of Cedega, perception is playing a larger hand with absolutely no significant information coming back from the Cedega developers.

Ads updates

Okay, a bit of a modification to the ads. The top ad banner has been increased to be the 4link. I've also placed a 4-link vertical drop on the left hand side of the page. The links should be color matched... and I'm not sure they are that obnoxious... I'll keep this format for probably a week before deciding if I need to shrink the ad sizes, or if they are fine for daily browsing.

right thing to do would be to obtain an Nvidia card...

As a journalist and runner of a Linux support site, I find myself sometimes making purchases or asking for hardware I personally wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. As this blog notes I have severe issues with Intel, yet in order to provide support for the Intel platform I need to have Intel hardware on hand.

I also have severe problems with Nvidia. I have little to no respect for the their development team. However, I do have examples of all of their GPU's aside from the FX lineup and the 8x00 lineup. Well, with the launch of Mepis 7 around the bend, it is going to become more critical to have an Nvidia 8x00 series cards since many users are still somehow sold on the concept that Nvidia has better drivers than AMD/ATi.

Nvidia has also recently managed to make me eat my words. The most recent driver update for the Legacy 96xx driver set actually fixed years old problems with Geforce4 GPU's. Source: Phoronix. Nvidia has also made a concerted effort to improve it's driver release rate, and I see more legitimate bugs and issues being addressed in each readme. A recent post on OrangeCrate indicated that a recent Nvidia driver was successfully rendering at 1440*900.

Which leaves me in a odd position. I don't WANT to buy an Nvidia card... much as the same as I do not WANT to buy an Intel Core processor... but it looks like the right thing for me to do is pick up the hardware.

Either that or improve my "asking for cash or donation skills" to the point of somebody shipping me a card. Doubtful. I ask for money about as well as Microsoft writes server software.

(oh common, I had to take a Microsoft pot shot in there SOMEWHERE).

Open-Licensed / Closed-Licensed

In the last post I used the terms Open-Licensed and Closed Licensed. I've also in the past used the terms gratis and non-gratis software. Why is that?

Well, the primary reason is the confusion surrounding Free Software. Free can have several meanings. It can mean Free as in Freedom. You can do what you want. Or it can mean free as in price, such as somebody tossing you a beer at a ballpark that you didn't pay for.

So, I decided to avoid the term Free Software and clarify the intent.

Open-Licensed software is software that is under an Open-Source license. The source code is available to look at and examine.

Closed-Licensed software is software that is under a proprietary license and the source code is not available.

Gratis-software is software that comes without a cost. You don't use your wallet to pay for gratis-software.

Non-gratis software is software that comes with a price tag. You have to pay to use the software.


Just because software is non-gratis does not mean that is not Open-Licensed. For example, the GPLv2 allows for software to have the source code available, but users must pay in order to get the software.


Now, I realize that trying to get other writers to stop using the term Free software is probably as pointless as asking Microsoft to release WinNT5 under GLPv2. It just ain't going to happen.

QT and GTK : impact.

Some time ago an newcomer to Linux commented about the apparent vile hatred and rivalry between Gnome and KDE, and the newcomer wondered why couldn't both groups just get along... wasn't Microsoft a better target to aim against?

As is well known, I am not a Gnome person. I'll run IceWM, I'll run a 'Box, I love XFCE, and it's my opinion that KDE is hands down the best userfriendly desktop available. As seen in this blog I have a tendency to take all the potshots at Gnome that I can. Keeping that in mind, I am probably NOT somebody you want to talk to if you want an objective and unbiased view of the rivalry between KDE and Gnome. However, the question needs to be asked... can I actually defend my position as being against Gnome? Am I blinded by past events to the point that I am being unreasonable?

Well, the answer isn't as clear cut as the Intel answer was... which is why the Intel post ran first.

To start with, lets go over some history. Gnome was originally created with GTK. GTK stands for the Gimp Tool Kit. Gnome was originally created in response to TrollTech's QT tool kit.

Thing was, QT originally was not open-licensed software. QT originally was closed software, which made the GNU developers nervous. TrollTech used the KDE desktop to promote QT. If you wanted to know what QT could do, you used KDE.

According to Wikipedia GNU developers started two projects back in 1997, one to create a new desktop using a different tool kit than QT, and one to create an open-licensed set of tools identical to QT called Harmony.

Again, according to Wikipedia, TrollTech re-licensed QT under the QPL in 1998 and established a KDE Foundation to insure that if TrollTech went bankrupt, was bought out, or whatever, that QT would continue. Wikipedia continues on to state that TrollTech re-licensed QT again in 2000 to be GPL software.

That's where the Ubersoft comic came in : http://www.ubersoft.net/comic/hd/2000/09/cant-win-losing

TrollTech had done everything that Richard M. Stallman and other GNU developers had demanded they do. TrollTech had played by Open-Source rules and yet GNU developers still railed against TrollTech and QT.

So... why does this hostility continue today?

Well, think about it.

QT was originally closed-licensed software and came with a cost to use. GTK has been open-licensed software from the start. There was a decided philosophical and business split between Linux and Unix desktop interface developers.

Business owners who were more practical in nature were more likely to spend the money for a QT license.

Hardliners for open-licensed software went with GTK+.

As I see it, Gnome developers have a real large problem with communication. The group has a reputation for being a closed clique. If a non-clique developer submits a patch to clean up code or enable a new feature, Gnome developers are known to reject the patches. Over the recent years it's gotten so bad with the clique nature that Linus T. himself went after Gnome on public mailing lists. Okay, so Linus doesn't know chemistry, biology, or physics, but he DOES know coding.

KDE developers? Well... I haven't found one that hasn't at least responded to an email. I don't SEE reports about new developers having problems submitting patches to KDE projects. I don't SEE reactionary rejections just because a coder wasn't in some "in-clique."

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the GNU Hardliners were wrong to pursue an alternative desktop... If Gnome had NOT been created, QT probably would have never been open-licensed.

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Now, why do I, personally, rail against Gnome so much? Isn't the corporate choice for Novell, RedHat, and Ubuntu?

Well, I'll be the first in line to admit that I Gnome was the first Linux desktop I tried on some ancient version of Red Hat. I couldn't get anything done. When Ubuntu came out after Mepis, I again tried the Gnome desktop... and again found myself unable to get any work accomplished. The user interface seemed to fly in the face of any sense that I could make out.

Now, okay, fine, somebody can easily claim that I just don't know a good Desktop interface. Yeah, okay, lets examine that idea. I offer up systems through MepisGuides.com that come pre-loaded and pre-configured with XFCE, also GTK based. I've written guides on how to install IceWM. I have installs of AntiX with FluxBox (I think). I have various consoles such as Sega Dreamcast, Playstation 2, Gamecube, Wii, and Playstation 3 all which have various "system" interfaces. I wrote Guides for Cedega that explained it's interface. I have a running Install of Vista RC1, and a running install of Vista Home Premium. I used to have an install of SymphonyOS, and for a while I had the OLPC LiveCD beta running.

I have no problems switching from one to the other and running through various interfaces.

Yet I have problems with Gnome. That indicates a serious problem when Gnome typically makes less sense to me than Vista.


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So... this answer isn't as clear cut. It is mostly opinion, and very subjective. Hey, some people use Gnome and like it. Fine. I don't.

Does this mean that I'll stop saying that Gnome developers have as much business as I do making a Desktop interface? Nope. It would take a lot of "groveling" from Gnome developers before I'd think about revising my opinion. Yeah, so I'm a little harsh. Call it payback for the years of potshots at KDE.

Amazon to do what Apple won't?

Hello from Amazon.com.

If you use Linux, you can currently buy individual songs. A Linux
version of the Amazon MP3 Downloader is under development and will
allow entire album purchases when released.

Our MP3 files contain no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions,
are provided in an industry standard MP3 format, and should be
compatible with most systems capable of reading MP3 audio files.