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Why Xbox Linux founder left the project
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CommentsThe founder of the high-profile Xbox Linux Project has left the group over concerns about the direction of the project and disagreements with the anonymous donor who's contributed $200,000 to port Linux to the Microsoft gaming device.
Kern also says he has concerns about the anonymous donor's record in the Open Source community, including license missteps and source publication delays, issues several companies entering the Open Source market have struggled with. Kern says he can't say more without giving away the identify of the donor.
The influx of money has taken away the "fun and art" of the project, Kern adds. "I founded the Xbox-Linux project after I read a article from a Microsoft employee about using the upcoming Xbox as a Web server," he says. "I thought it would be funny [to port it to Linux]. Fun and skill enhancement stands for me in the foreground. After the press release that we had a donor willing donate $200,000 USD, many, many people were coming to the project, some very good developers and some guys only willed to work for the money. I would rather die than publish my free code in mind for the profit of big commercial companies."
The Xbox Linux Project has gotten a lot of mainstream attention recently, especially after the $200,000 donation was announced July 1. The project announced its 0.2 release Monday.
Kern says the project will go on just fine without him. He says Steil and other core members of the project are "great developers" and the project is in the right hands with Steil as its leader. He hopes he can sit down and share a beer with the group at Linux events in Europe.
Steil says Kern won't be missed. "He was not important. This sounds hard and mean, but it's just the truth." Steil says Kern registered the original .org domain for the project in 2001, but many developers did more work on the project than Kern did.
" I hope you don't understand this all as a war between the Xbox Linux maintainers," Steil says. "Imagine, we had just clicked the 'admin' checkbox on Sourceforge once too often by mistake? If we take the checked box away, it doesn't mean there is a problem with the person!"
Kern answers that he did a lot of non-programming work for the project, including publicity, writing documentation, and finding sponsors to donate bandwidth.
Kern says he hasn't left the Open Source community. He's currently working on the installation GUI of the InceptionOS Linux distribution.
Comments
on Why Xbox Linux founder left the projectNote: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
the only way the X box will sell is with some decent programs and I don't think MS programers are up to that.
I wouldn't be at all suprised if the donator was M$ based as somebody else mentioned, M$ can hardly come out and openly support Linux on the XBox, this is the only way they can support it.
>>>>>It is just my load of opinions.
How could they do this. The bastard bill gates (lower case on purpose) thinks he can take my freedom of playing pure games.
I bet he is going to try to be king of all the video game consoles. Just like he tried to do with PCs, but Linux was there to stop him. Now some people who are betraying all of us are trying to create a Linux on the xbox. Let microcrap use windows for their servers. Let them suffer with slow servers. Why help them out?
You think money is any good. He is maybe paying them so much money because he knows that he will earn twice as much having people pay to play and selling xboxes. Think about it!
My name is bo bo the clown, I do childrens parties...
I sold my RV and cashed in my superannuation early 'cause I want to play free civ on the xbox.
If it has been commercialized and people are rushing into the project, then good for them. That's the way you get quick results. God knows we don't need another alpha-stage port given up on, but still lying around. This is what the project needs, regardless of the incentive.
Bill Gates? Sony? Red Hat? Lindows? No special incentive for any of them.
As for the donor, it's probably a publisher that wants to push the game out the door once it's developed. Think about it: put out $200,000 and avoid the expenses and bother of hiring game programmers who probably know little about Linux.
Also, XBox Linux is not a "game" per-se. It's a port of GNU/Linux to the XBox architecture. The fact that you think that this is a game production, speaks volumes.
Oh - and, newsforge admins. The above message was blocked for "ASCII art". Looks like something is broken.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)
Bill Gates wouldn't miss $200K either, but if the word got out that it was him, it would be most damaging to his cash-cow. I really doubt that it was him.
It is probably a corporation we all have not thought of, which will use it later for publicity reasons: "We helped make the Xbox Linux project happen"
anonymous donor
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on August 29, 2002 02:51 AMWell then, this donor is most likely a corporation or a major representative of one, with a bit of a wild and entrepeneurial spirit, and is definately controversial within the community. It could be a tonne of people, but my gut feeling is that it is Michael Robertson from Lindows.com.
He's got a bunch of money, he certainly wouldnt mind giving MS a little jab every now and then, and who knows if he has some plan to resell used Xboxen as cheap workstations. (Of course, this is only a purely unsubstantiated guess.)
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