A Message From Valve's Gabe Newell

[TeoLinuX]

Diet

Is Gabe looking for a diet for the shader compiler or for himself?

[KameZero]

April fools/troll or not, we all know who companies should turn to when they run into issues porting anything to linux: His name starts with i and ends in cculus.

[Michael]

Another email has arrived

[Licaon]

MojoShader... icculus... you guys... :wink: :wink: :nudge: :nudge:

[psycho_driver]

What servers and IP address range did this come from?

I'm betting someone's playing a joke on Michael for April Fools

^ Winner winner chicken dinner.

[allquixotic]

April fools/troll or not, we all know who companies should turn to when they run into porting anything to linux: His name starts with i and ends in cculus.

Yeah, the same guy who hates the open source graphics drivers and thinks they'll never be good enough for gaming; the same guy who never delivered on UT3 for Linux; the same guy whose Linux "ports" check for specific OpenGL version strings (which are not required to say anything in particular per the OpenGL spec) and abort/crash the program if you don't have a "blessed" driver; and (my memory is foggy here) the same guy who wants a stable kernel ABI so he can promote shipping binary blobs by default in all the major distros.

I'll take proprietary games, in userspace, without DRM, without phoning home, provided that they are continuously maintained, provided that they explicitly support the open source drivers no matter how "limited" they may be, and whose engine is open sourced once the maintenance and/or revenue stops (a la Id Software).

But the proprietary buck stops there -- the defining characteristic of something that I think morally should be free software is in its general utility. You can call it "The General Utility Test". Of a particular work, I ask, "Is X work generally useful, and does its use by others impose no burden on its creator?"

Is a bitmap or texture or model of a specific character, in a specific game story generally useful? No -- it has a very limited, restricted use in reference to that story. The ways that using that character may be desired by the public are already permitted under free speech and are often exercised without legal action being taken.

Is a Lua script that causes a specific scripted in-game event, like a character walking down a street in response to the player arriving, generally useful? No -- it's basically artistic / domain-specific data, again, like the texture discussed above.

Is a 3d rendering engine with network code, engine infrastructure and generic ways to render meshes and create scripted scenes, generally useful? YES. Such a technology can be harmlessly copied and shared among an unlimited number of people, who can then put that to use to make their own applications or games.

Is a 3d graphics driver which interfaces with 3d hardware to render hardware-accelerated graphics, generally useful? YES. It can enable an unlimited number of varied applications that use the basic paradigm of 3d acceleration as a creative tool, a business tool, a consumer tool or a mix of all three.

So, as I see it, anyone who opposes open 3d graphics drivers or open 3d engines is an enemy of the FOSS movement and I wouldn't want them participating in such a potentially high-visibility project as Source games on Linux.

-1 to Icculus.

[allquixotic]

haha nice michael get steam-linux beta keys next week and the phoronix members will get a invitation to the steam beta yayyyy

next week is gaming time!

ROFL

Jumping to conclusions just a little bit, are we?

Steam on Linux isn't nearly as valuable as enabling all the Source-engine games to come to Linux. Many of them can be played without Steam. We don't really need Steam itself; we just need the Source engine core. Developers who write games with Source would then be able to release them for Linux.

[KameZero]

snip
-1 to Icculus.

Guess what? You can zealot all you want but 99% of game companies could care less. And guess what: most users don't care whether there drivers and programs are opensource or not. They just want everything to work out of the box. It's people like you holding back linux desktop development.

Icculus gets companies to get their stuff on Linux that otherwise almost surely never would have. Which is all most linux users really want.

I'll take proprietary games, in userspace, without DRM, without phoning home, provided that they are continuously maintained, provided that they explicitly support the open source drivers no matter how "limited" they may be, and whose engine is open sourced once the maintenance and/or revenue stops (a la Id Software).

Valves game and any game made on the source engine are not going to do any of this. So why would you even care about it?

[allquixotic]

Guess what? You can zealot all you want but 99% of game companies could care less. And guess what: most users don't care whether there drivers and programs are opensource or not. They just want everything to work out of the box. It's people like you holding back linux desktop development.

Icculus gets companies to get their stuff on Linux that otherwise almost surely never would have. Which is all most linux users really want.

So you just want a desktop that works well, right? You don't care if it's open source or not?

Okay, let's take that to its logical extreme.

Let's say you don't care about the morality of it and that it's just about things "working right".

This is how the pragmatic open source folks view it: they believe that developing software in the open directly results in technically superior software, which contains fewer bugs, more features, better performance, better security, and all the indirect benefits that can be argued for as a result of the open development platform.

There are two major reasons why you would be an ABSOLUTE FOOL to try and refute this view:

(1) If you're using Linux at all, it's because you agree that it's a powerful, fast, stable platform. There's some REASON why you are using Linux and not Windows or Mac; there's some REASON why you are on Phoronix at all (unless you came here just to troll). Linux is a minority, so chances are good that it wasn't just shoved down your throat by some salesman at a computer store. You chose it. So, why did you choose it? Because it's better than the alternatives in some way that matters to you? OKAY. Now we've got that established.

So now, do you think it's just mere happenstance that the Linux desktop happens to be (insert whatever benefit you see in it over and above Windows or Mac)? Is it just a convenient reality of the present moment that Linux happens to have fewer bugs than Windows, but that this could change at any moment and then you'd move back over to Windows?

If you don't fall into this category, then you'd have to concede that some fundamental reason is responsible for helping Linux get to a place that causes you to prefer using it over Windows or Mac. The only three reasons I can think of are (a) that it's free as in beer; or (b) that it's open source, or (c) that it's free software.

If the only reason you're using Linux is because it's free as in beer, then certainly you have to realize that, as software tends to get proprietary, people start charging for it, right? "Freeware" (closed source, proprietary software that costs $0) is a huge minority; it's even less prevalent than open source software, and WAY less prevalent than proprietary software that costs money.

So if you are in favor of continuing to use software which is freeware, anything you try to argue will eventually paint you into a corner where you are forced to acknowledge that the only impetus which actively promotes the perpetuation of freeware is that impetus which comes from a special kind of freeware -- namely, free and open source software! Without it, the Linux ecosystem would start accruing charges of the magnitude and frequency of which you see on Windows and Mac, where simple text editors and the operating system itself must be paid for.

So, as a free-as-in-beer-loving advocate, why wouldn't you want to perpetuate the free/open source movement, which is your most obvious buddy in helping to ensure that software can't become trapped in expensive proprietary solutions?

(2) There is a tremendous amount of data out there gathered by corporations and participants in the FOSS movement alike, which suggests that there is physical evidence that open source development methodologies produce better software (where "better" is defined in a number of ways, but usually it comes down to some subset of stability, performance, manpower, features, and so on). The burden of proof is on you to refute this data and to show how, even if Linux and its ecosystem were proprietary, its superior performance, stability and security would have continued along just fine, easily surpassing larger proprietary competitors such as Windows and Mac. So today we'd have Linus Torvalds as the big cheese of a company, selling this very compelling proprietary operating system called Linux, which he started in his basement in 1991. Right?


Regarding Icculus: I don't believe that he actively perpetuates trying to convince companies to bring their stuff to Linux. Instead, he just seizes the opportunity when a company does accede to porting a game to Linux. A company puts out a call, saying "We want to port our stuff to Linux!" and he just answers the call, and dutifully performs the required work in exchange for pay. He's hardly a thought leader; he's hardly someone who grabs the problem of Linux gaming by its horns and leads the masses of corporations into bringing their games to Linux. The company has to make the first move; their CEO or CTO has to say "Yeah, I think that's a good idea... let's put some money behind it". Maybe he might be saying that because Icculus gave him a phone call or came to his office, but those kinds of private dealings are as open to speculation in favor as they are against, so I wouldn't use that as an argument if I were you.

I just find it astonishing that you just tossed aside both the Free Software and Open Source movements and their associated tenants as inconsequential to the upbringing, development or perpetuation of Linux, and all you care about is getting lots of neat software to run on Linux. That's extremely short-sighted.

There's something different -- something unique -- about Linux; even people who actively oppose the use or adoption of Linux agree that it's special. It's not just another proprietary operating system, in the sense that AIX or VMS or Solaris or OS X is. It's the character of the OS, of its users, of its ecosystem. That character is the valuation of freedom, of civil liberties, of the power of the open source development methodology. It is an extremely powerful force that is accelerating at a rate faster than traditional proprietary competitors can keep up with. This unique character of Linux isn't inherent in any of the technical decisions that were made in its design. From a technical point of view, there is really nothing at all remarkable about Linux, given that it very heavily borrows its design, the algorithms used, the programming languages used, etc. from earlier incarnations of UNIX. It's even to the point that its proprietary competitors like Windows and Mac can (and often do) directly support or use these programming languages and technologies. Without its core ideals, Linux does not have two legs to stand on. And if you really feel that it's better off that way, maybe you shouldn't be caring about Linux gaming in the first place?

[mo0n_sniper]

nicee

Steam for Linux would be something really great.
A good reason to buy Portal2 and install Linux on my new laptop