A Message From Valve's Gabe Newell

[Ancurio]

Why nobody mentioned Unigine team here yet? They have successfully developed a modern engine which runs well on Linux. Even though they compete with Valve in some way, they might help - bringing Steam to Linux will likely benefit them, too.

They live in Russia.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Why nobody mentioned Unigine team here yet?

Two hours ago I send info about Unigine Corp. directly to Mike.

[crazycheese]

I have to disagree with you there. From your own words you are a fairly hard-liner, border line zealot, or at the very least an idealist. I'm not disagreeing with your position either, given all else is equal I believe OSS > Priority, however a pragmatist accepts that things are not always equal and are much more likely to bend in order to get what they need.

We live in a world where people need to make money, I myself do this my writing software none of which is open source. I don't see any innate right I or anyone else has has over the works of others. Game engines, for example, are typically quite difficult to write, and those who spend the time writing them deserve the option of doing so for monetary reward, and whilst there are other buisness models to achieve this, the most common is to remain closed source, which is exactly what the likes of id software do, at least for a time.

Given all else is equal, of course an open source engine, or any other software, is better as it can be ported and updated as things change. However, as a pragmatist today, I'd rather have steam, my proprietary games, on their proprietary engines than go without, or dual boot windows like currently.

That does not mean I don't have massive respect for the likes of the FSF for trying to work towards a better tomorrow, I just want to get things done today. There is the argument that those of us who bend, are detrimental to achieving the greater good; I'm not sure if I entirely agree with that (a linux with steam is potentially more popular, and thus will garner potentally better support, which with any luck with be OSS) but a guys gotta eat.

Still, respect to you if you use no proprietary software, it's a shame your ideals will require you to miss out on steam for linux if it happens.

Your logic is faulty.

You claim that you need to "eat", this is why you write closed source software. Correct?

If we extrapolate, you certainly mean: Writing code -> Selling it-> Getting money -> "Food" to write more code.

How about: Writing code-> Not selling it, because everyone has copied it?

Is this the reason you close the source of it? To sell more copies? So you make money by "selling" more copies, than with "coding"?

How about:

Writing code -> Not selling it, because corporations already own patents, control markets and have work force many times cheaper of yourself.

You are left with "coding" and getting paid for that.

But because you still write closed source and prefer closed source, you have to write not a typical program, you have to write whole operating system from scratch (wonderful DOS era!), a long with its errors and mistakes. More closed source buggy engines!! More bugs and more effort to write it!! This is hard work to be respected!!

This is how sun solaris engineers thought things should work.

But then come two things:
- microsoft with cheap chineese or indian coders (work for rice), flooding the market with cheap (and patented) closed source.
- opensource, where people reuse everything and get paid only for actual coding.

Now sun is dead. No one cares for dead closed source code.

Talking about microsoft, do you know they SHARE their "closed source" within the company. So they are really OPENSOURCE, but within themself. They cannot do without it, they cannot let everyone code own code and close it down, so they have 10,000 closed source parts from each 10,000 their "programmers". They are sharing internally open code.

But there is more! UNlike creating material things, programming is a process to transfer material energy into informational form (food->code). Then, you are left with a puzzle to get material payment to compensate that (code->food).
1) You traditional faulty dead approach is to handle information like material thing (close it down). This will not work, because Im writing this and when you read it, it won?t dissapear from here but double. Information doubles on use, material extiguishes on use. Feel difference? Now imagine, I won?t write this at all and keep it in my head. Do you really thing it will stay intact? No, it will be extict, because NO ONE USES IT. Instead of using this advantage you are trying to castrate it and this is the reason you loose.
2) DRM approach is to differenitiate between information and information carrier. Information carrier is material, information is information. So they just bind information to material carrier (reserve the right to copy to themself). But it does not work, because information can always be cloned without damage. However, this is not so damaging, because filming and coding are rather very different things. You cannot reuse some material when filming (scenes from other movies). You will need to go from scratch for every movie. This is why no one cares much about "opensourcing" a movie. "Freeware" movie is sufficient.
3) Opensource approach is to differenitiate between information and information carrier, also deferentiate between effort required to create information and actual result. This is why we have subscriptions, bidding on target or buying out. Define the amount of money you will need to implement the stuff that is needed, then collect the money, code and set it for free for reuse. And by the way, you will need considerably LESS money than coding as closed-source developer, because you are ALREADY free to reuse whichever exists before. You are not reinventing operating systems, but doing actual work.

[crazycheese]

They live in Russia.

..... and?

[Drago]

Wouldn't it be funny if Gordon started at Valve. Making HL working on a free OS. Gordon would be a Free Man

This made my day Really...
If HL2 comes out native (no wine lib $hit), I promise to buy a copy.

[susikala]

Regardless of whether I believe phoronix or not, this post shows again the level of integrity and commitment it has to Linux and FOSS, namely none. You use CrapOS to read/send mail and you want to use _that_ as proof for something? What else do you use it for? What's the point of having a website that's dedicated to, and I quote the title tag on the front page, "[Phoronix] Linux Hardware Reviews, Benchmarking, & Gaming", and then using software/hardware of the most vile firm on earth, of the devil's incarnation and the very pest of the 20th/21st century? How can anyone believe _any_ word you say when you don't even use Linux yourself to accomplish the most basic tasks? It just seems you're riding on its growing popularity for the sake of money, and this is not something acceptable.

[phoen1x]

lol what

Regardless of whether I believe phoronix or not, this post shows again the level of integrity and commitment it has to Linux and FOSS, namely none. You use CrapOS to read/send mail and you want to use _that_ as proof for something? What else do you use it for? What's the point of having a website that's dedicated to, and I quote the title tag on the front page, "[Phoronix] Linux Hardware Reviews, Benchmarking, & Gaming", and then using software/hardware of the most vile firm on earth, of the devil's incarnation and the very pest of the 20th/21st century? How can anyone believe _any_ word you say when you don't even use Linux yourself to accomplish the most basic tasks? It just seems you're riding on its growing popularity for the sake of money, and this is not something acceptable.

What's wrong with using apple's hardware? And as Michael stated before he uses virtualised ubuntu most of the time. I like linux too, but i use windows, because my family members like windows better and because sometimes i wanna play some games and wine, dual boot ain't my thing. I have linux in vm, but it's performance sucks. And calling OSX crapOS just shows how ignorant You are.

[susikala]

What's wrong with using apple's hardware? And as Michael stated before he uses virtualised ubuntu most of the time. I like linux too, but i use windows, because my family members like windows better and because sometimes i wanna play some games and wine, dual boot ain't my thing. I have linux in vm, but it's performance sucks. And calling crapOS crapOS just shows how ignorant u are.

It's called hypocrisy. If you keep telling people that you're interested in something, hell you even go so far as to open up a website about it, and then you don't even use it yourself but something else, that makes you a hypocrite. And thus a morally generally suspicious person, whose other statements should also be taken cum grano salis.

I would have no problem using windows myself if I wanted to play games that were written for windows, I find it a much better solution than using wine, it's just that it would be kind of hypocrite of me to support Linux all the time and then go and use something else instead, so I just don't play games for windows. And reading mail isn't even a crapOS exclusive thing.

I name it crapOS for two reasons: first, because I don't like advertising things I despise, and two, because that's what it is for me.

By the way, using 'lol', 'u', and calling other people names doesn't exactly make you come off intelligent.

[kraftman]

What's wrong with using apple's hardware? And as Michael stated before he uses virtualised ubuntu most of the time. I like linux too, but i use windows, because my family members like windows better and because sometimes i wanna play some games and wine, dual boot ain't my thing. I have linux in vm, but it's performance sucks. And calling OSX crapOS just shows how ignorant You are.

I'd love to see os x performance in vm. It's a toy OS (like Windows), but with some professional apps available. However, the sky is falling for both MS and Apple, because Linux is gaining one of the most important things to conquer desktops - games. After very positive Linux/(K)Ubuntu/KDE reviews I have noticed there started some FUD campaign at some sites (economic) and this means MS and Apple must spending a lot of $$ to support anti Linux articles. They started to fear, because Linux proven to be faster, safer and in many cases more user friendly.

As for apple's hardware there are sometimes problems running Linux on it. Such problems are much less common on typical PCs.

[allquixotic]

..... and?

The guys over at Valve have made it pretty clear that whoever they end up hiring is gonna have to move to Bellevue, Washington. It was a deal breaker earlier on in the day yesterday, when Valve told us that the reason they can't hire Ryan Gordon is that Ryan is unwilling to move house to the Bellevue area. Unless you can commute to their physical offices, they don't want you.

For a task as easily-remotable as software engineering, I find this pretty ridiculous, myself -- but a great many software companies still live in the old mentality of "if I'm paying you, I want a warm body in my office". It's not entirely unreasonable (and it'd be downright expected if the position were requiring a national security clearance or somesuch); but for something as low-risk as game development, I really can't see the harm in just letting someone from anywhere in the world work for you. Just have frequent status reports with them and make sure you keep apprised of what work they're doing and what progress they're making, and they should be just as productive as if they were in your office. If you're REALLY paranoid that they will just take your money and not do anything, then get them to set up a webcam for you of their office and share their screen with you so you can watch them work. That's no different than what companies already do to most workers; it's common for certain parts of the company to silently watch your screen and make sure you're on task. Yes, they have nothing better to do all day.

So, working under the assumption that Valve wants someone to physically be there: Getting one or more Russians a US passport and then getting them a place to live in Bellevue sounds like a daunting task. First, they have to be willing to move; second, they have to qualify for the passport; third, they have to either have enough money on-hand, or get paid large sums up-front from Valve so they can establish a foothold here. And I'm sure Valve's time schedule for doing this is pretty short, because they want to proceed with this project (whatever that project may be), and I'm sure they've got a docket of highly-qualified candidates a mile long.