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http://www.daniweb.com

Surely id Software, developers of Doom and Quake, cannot seriosult be thinking about leaving Linux behind? Lead Programmer John Carmack sets the record straight.

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billandad's picture
Created by billandad 14 years 36 weeks ago
Category: End User   Tags:
aboutblank's picture

aboutblank

14 years 36 weeks 8 hours 14 min ago

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I don't see how this is directly

I don't see how this is directly relevant to free software. Non-free software of all forms are equally user subjugating.

spikeb's picture

spikeb

14 years 36 weeks 8 hours 7 min ago

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It's _future_ free software, most

It's _future_ free software, most likely (much like the quake engines and such) but currently, you're right.

aboutblank's picture

aboutblank

14 years 36 weeks 7 hours 23 min ago

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Yes, ID has had a record of belatedly

Yes, ID has had a record of belatedly liberating their software (I guess it's better late than never), I still don't see how these allegations of ID not supporting Linux for their latest engine is of any news to us. Without any right to the source code, the user becomes dependant upon the author to help themselves. This is true of this program AND any other non-free software and hence my concern.

ID may or may not liberate this program in the future and that is complete speculation as there are no real news about liberation so this article doesn't really help us very much.

snotbutter's picture

snotbutter

14 years 35 weeks 6 days 9 hours ago

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hi. i totally against propreitary

hi. i totally against propreitary softwares but it make sense for me if more gmaes (even proprietray) is maked for gnu/linux. it because then more users and more community means more develpoers and more free softwares. we get everyone on gnu/linux first... then get everyone on total foss... then get everyone on open hardwares... babies steps right?

Jimbob's picture

Jimbob

14 years 35 weeks 6 days 8 hours ago

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I think you hit the nail right

I think you hit the nail right on the head with this one snotbutter.

I don't want anyone accusing me of being pro-proprietary software, drivers, codecs or formats. I don't use them. And I'm not interested in games (although, I am impressed with the screenshots I have seen for Tremulous and similar foss games based on the id Quake engine).

Now, having said that, I do believe that the more companies that port their games, utilities, drivers, and other software even... ugh... MS products... shudder... the less excuses there are for people to stick with Windows and the more reasons there are for making the switch to a free software distro. And, when they do, they switch from using lots of proprietary software (and maybe a bit of free software) to using mainly free software (and maybe a bit of proprietary software).

The community gains massively when that happens for a bunch of reasons:

* more users debugging.
* more developers working on GNU/Linux.
* a greater market share so we don't get left out by hardware manufacturers (this is happening already with Dell, Lenovo and HP).
* And the big one: more people become exposed to the ideas of software freedom and free culture. Now, some people are never going to care (they're the same ones who don't vote, for example) but out of every 100 people you expose to the notions of software and cultural freedom there will be a percentage people who will grab onto the ideas and embrace them.

To sum up, the more appealing (games help massively here) and easy (codecs and drivers) we can make it and the less excuses there are to switch (legacy software, if not freed, at least becoming ported), the less excuses companies will have and the more appealing and easy it will become for them to free their software.

spikeb's picture

spikeb

14 years 35 weeks 6 days 8 hours ago

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i think the whole proprietary games

i think the whole proprietary games being ported thing is very interesting from an end user standpoint, but it IS kind of not for this site.

Jimbob's picture

Jimbob

14 years 35 weeks 6 days 8 hours ago

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Oh I agree. This particular story

Oh I agree. This particular story isn't really relevant enough so I didn't vote for it.

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