Frozenbyte Bundle Already Rakes In $250k USD

[Silverthorn]

One solution to this problem would be to make all distribution's software management tools able to handle different package formats at once.

Another solution could be to develop a cross-building toolkit which would allow developers to target every platforms at once. Including different versions of mac and windows. The toolkit should include services which would automatically download new versions of each target and check if the build completes and possibly run some simple test cases (like most configure scrips does).

[ean5533]

One solution to this problem would be to make all distribution's software management tools able to handle different package formats at once.

You're trivializing an incredibly complicated problem. Don't you think if it was that simple that the problem would have been solved 100 times by now?

That solution presents many problems, but the biggest one is that you would have to maintain twice as many repositories. You'd have to maintain a set of debian repositories (to satisfy debian dependencies) and you'd have to maintain a set of RPM repositories (to satisfy RPM dependencies). And you'd have to ensure that those repositories were compatible with each other, which I assure you would be a godawful nightmare.

[deanjo]

You're trivializing an incredibly complicated problem. Don't you think if it was that simple that the problem would have been solved 100 times by now?

That solution presents many problems, but the biggest one is that you would have to maintain twice as many repositories. You'd have to maintain a set of debian repositories (to satisfy debian dependencies) and you'd have to maintain a set of RPM repositories (to satisfy RPM dependencies). And you'd have to ensure that those repositories were compatible with each other, which I assure you would be a godawful nightmare.

And yet there are build services out there that do all just that and it is relatively pain free.

[ean5533]

And yet there are build services out there that do all just that and it is relatively pain free.

Can you please list one of those services?

[deanjo]

Can you please list one of those services?

opensuse build service.

http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Build_Service_supported_build_targets

There even is a downloadable, preconfigured, livecd that has everything needed on the SuSEstudio website.

[ean5533]

opensuse build service.

http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Build_Service_supported_build_targets

There even is a downloadable, preconfigured, livecd that has everything needed on the SuSEstudio website.

First off, I don't think you understood what I was saying to Devius. He asked why package managers (like dpkg) can't be modified to read all types of packages. I explained why. The link you provided doesn't solve that problem -- it does the opposite. Instead making package managers read all types of packages, it takes your source code and makes different packages for each of the various package managers.

However, it doesn't solve the real problem. openSUSE's build service only supports open source software. Anyone who wanted to distribute a non-OSS program would not be able to use openSUSE's build service. Frozenbyte's games are non-OSS, and thus they're still screwed. Hell, you can't even build OSS software that's at risk for patents, like ffmpeg.

Still, this is an interesting service that I didn't know about until now. It might make my life easier for an OSS project I work on. Thanks for the link.

[deanjo]

However, it doesn't solve the real problem. openSUSE's build service only supports open source software. Anyone who wanted to distribute a non-OSS program would not be able to use openSUSE's build service. Frozenbyte's games are non-OSS, and thus they're still screwed. Hell, you can't even build OSS software that's at risk for patents, like ffmpeg.

Yes and no, the online service restricts you to building OSS apps, the local OBS solutions allow you to build what ever you want such as the live OBS appliance that I was talking about.

[ean5533]

Yes and no, the online service restricts you to building OSS apps, the local OBS solutions allow you to build what ever you want such as the live OBS appliance that I was talking about.

Ah, my bad. I thought I read that the program would still dial home even when it was run locally. If that's not the case, then yeah, it sounds like this tool would build all the packages you ever needed. I wonder why it hasn't gained more publicity? I certainly never heard of it when I was researching packaging methods.

[deanjo]

I wonder why it hasn't gained more publicity?

Because it wasn't brought out by Canonical.

[mirv]

Because it wasn't brought out by Canonical.

Sad, but true. There have been some brief blurbs on phoronix about the openSUSE build service, but if someone at canonical gets a new chair, news everywhere!

Humble Bundle just passed the $500,000 mark (in whichever currency it's represented). One wonders when the numbers from this sort of thing will make larger companies realise that there is a Linux market (about 1/4 of sales is attributed to Linux so far).