Metrowerks
unveiled a host of new development tools technology this week aimed at
expanding opportunities for game developers and shortening time to
market.

At the Game Developers Conference (GDC), Metrowerks announced the
availability of a new Analysis Tools Kit (ATtaCK) and demonstrated a
new
Linux version of its CodeWarrior for PlayStation2 tools. The company
also
announced today plans to work with Motorola, Ericsson and Siemens to
deliver
development tools for a new Universal Mobile Games Platform.

“The Analysis Tools Kit underscores our commitment to helping game
developers reach market as fast as possible with high quality games and
content,” said Brian Gildon, director of core technology and games
platforms, Metrowerks. “This is leading-edge tools technology, and
combined
with our breadth of platform support, it demonstrates how serious we
are
about the gaming space.”

Analysis Tools Construction Kit (AttaCK)

Metrowerks’ Analysis Tools Construction Kit (ATtaCK) lets game
developers
custom-build tools to profile, debug and analyze their applications.
The
ATtaCK framework was originally created by Metrowerks to build the highly popular
CodeWarrior
Analysis tools suite — including the Hierarchical Profile and Code
Coverage
tools. With ATtaCK, developers can create their own tools to solve the
highly specific, system-level problems encountered in games projects.

ATtaCK is available this week directly from Metrowerks for US$15,000.
That
price includes the tool set and one development team license.
Additional
licenses are available for US$5000 per development team. For more
information, contact Metrowerks by telephone at 800-377-5416
(512-997-4700
outside the U.S.), or by e-mail at games@metrowerks.com.

PlayStation2 Tools for Linux

Metrowerks is porting its CodeWarrior for PlayStation2 tools to the
Linux
operating system, and is showing an alpha version of the tools at GDC
this
week. The tools, which are expected to ship by mid-year 2001, provide
game
developers with another option for host platform development.

Universal Mobile Games Platform

Metrowerks is working with three of the industry’s leading wireless
technology providers to make it easier for developers to create games
and
applications for the mobile market. Motorola, Ericsson and Siemens
today
announced plans for an industry initiative to define a universal mobile
games platform, and will work with Metrowerks to deliver CodeWarrior(r)
development tools for the new platform.

About Metrowerks

Founded in 1985 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, Metrowerks
develops,
markets and supports CodeWarrior hardware and software development
solutions
for a number of operating systems and the most popular microprocessors.
CodeWarrior allows programmers to build applications from one unique
integrated development environment (IDE). For more information, please
visit the Metrowerks web site at http://www.metrowerks.com.

Metrowerks, the Metrowerks logo and CodeWarrior are registered
trademarks of
Metrowerks Corp. All other company and product names may be registered
trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies/holders, and are
hereby recognized.

This isn’t exactly Open Source-related, but reader wagdog wrote us: “According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the demand for
H1-B’s has fallen sharply (story at CNet). The downturn in the tech industry
means that,

according to a story at rediff.com, there just isn’t
as much demand for foreign IT professionals as the ITAA had led Congress to believe when
that the H-1B cap
was increased to 195,000 last October (see the press release posted at isn.org). Unlike March of last year, the INS is nowhere near reaching the cap, according to the story from SFGate.com.
H-1B workers caught in the recent spate of layoffs worry that they
may be
forced to leavethe U.S. if they cannot find work within 10 days of
being unemployed, as is required by the INS, reports rediff.com. This rule has been thrown
into doubt by an INS spokesperson claiming that foreigners can
stay in the U.S., reports Wired.com, and look for work well beyond the 10 day limit (more from rediff.com). However, immigration lawyer Jose Latour is very
skeptical and worries that his clients may fall out of status and ineligible for Green Cards, according to a story on usvisanews.com.”

ZDNet reports on Mac OS X’s history up until now. “On the eve of unveiling its latest generation of Macintoshes, Apple Computer told reporters
of something even greater on the horizon: a new version of the Mac operating system that
would add a bevy of groundbreaking features.

That was seven years ago.”

The Register says Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer seems to have a split personality when it comes to Linux. On one hand he calls Linux a “toy,” on the other hand, it’s a major threat.

– by Jack Bryar –
Open Source Business –
Linux marketeers, repeat after me: “The channel is everything, the
channel is everything, the channel is everything.”

It’s the hardest lesson for most new software and system developers
to learn. You can’t get to the market without help. And that help is going to
cost you money, time and aggravation. If you want to be a player in the
enterprise marketplace you have to figure out a way to work with the established
channel of VARs, integrators and resellers. You might not like the fact. You
probably shouldn’t like it. But you can’t avoid it.

There’s been a lot of chatter in the I.T. press speculating about
why so many of the major Linux players seem to be crashing when they try to sell to
large corporate accounts, and nearly all the theorizing has missed the point.
The reason many of these firms have failed has little to do with the
supposed flaws in Linux as a platform — the flaws are there, but they aren’t the
reason. It’s also got little to do with the fact that even the largest Linux-only
vendor is microscopic compared to established vendors Dell or IBM, although
that’s not a small problem, either.

The biggest problem has been the fact that most vendors don’t want
to play by the rules of the I.T. game. Linux is different, but not that different.
Most Linux developers will need to identify, feed and care for a set of local
resellers who can work the end user market for them. And most of the Linux
specialists haven’t tried very hard to do that.

Take good ol’ Red Hat. At least the company has a partner
program for the VAR and reseller community. It hopes to grow that program to the point
that it generates 60% of gross sales. CEO and president Matthew Szulik was featured in VAR Business a couple of weeks back. It’s just that most
established VARs don’t think Red Hat has put together a very good program. According to the recent VAR Business poll, Red
Hat was dead last in its categories among the VAR community,
despite a top-rated product. Why? Because doing business with the company was so
difficult and the company’s management of its VAR program was so inconsistent and
disorganized that some key partners wondered if the company was all
that committed to having relationships.

While Red Hat may have been trashed by the VAR and reseller
community, at least the company showed up, which is more than could be said of most
other Linux-focused product developers. A scan of the VAR
Business Partners database was significant for what wasn’t in it.
Namely a whole bunch of the Linux company names you might have expected. You
can’t win the channel if you don’t try to compete for it.

This is not to say that winning the hearts and minds of the VAR
community is any guarantee of financial success. Developers have noticed that Sun
Microsystems has managed to survive quite nicely despite earning blisteringly bad
reputations for directly competing against its channel partners.

And Novell has
served as a cautionary example of just how badly the channel can treat a product
developer. Until recently most resellers loved Novell. And many of them proved
their love by abusing the company — taking leads to grow their own support
businesses, while neglecting to sell any Novell product whatsoever. In a number of cases
they were reselling support services Novell provided to them for free.

Stories like that are not uncommon. Many Linux developers are no
different from other smaller I.T. developers. They worry about reseller loyalties,
fear reseller competencies (or lack thereof) and deeply resent the loss of
as much as 30% of their price point to the channel.

This is even more of a problem in the Linux arena. Vendors like VA
Linux (which owns NewsForge) are depending on the growth of their own systems integration businesses as a means to generate badly needed revenue. Many of them have no other significant revenue stream outside of systems integration. Is there room for such companies to develop a VAR strategy?

A couple of Linux firms have tried, with mixed success. Linux
NetworX recognized that it would need channel partners if it were to make
headway selling its cluster management technology outside selected niche markets. It
recently developed a specialized VAR program, called the LNXI Cluster Partner
Program for “VARs of all sizes” to help that effort, but the program didn’t
preserve the company’s independence. A few days ago EBIZ Enterprises agreed to
purchase the company.

Caldera Systems has taken a slightly different approach. The company
has had a pre-existing reseller program. A few days ago it announced that its
Open Linux Workstation had “entered open beta” and the company was encouraging software downloads by would-be resellers and integrators. Among the bait to attract
developers was a particularly rich set of development tools, including the tools that
Caldera will give to its own professional services group. The company promises
that the final version of the product will come with a complete commercial
development toolkit.

There are plenty of reasons to think that Caldera’s plan for the
channel will succeed. Despite grumbling in the channel, Sun has succeeded in selling
directly and through its VAR program. IBM has one of the strongest professional
services business in high-tech, and it still manages to generate a significant
portion of its sales through VARs and other resellers. In fact, much of the logic
behind Big Blue’s commitment to Linux involves a major expansion of the reseller
channel and the company’s in-house integrators.

In fact, there’s also plenty of reason to think that resellers will
stick with a small set of Linux vendors if they are treated right. The diversity
and (dare we say it, forking) that has occurred in the Linux marketplace
means that VARs and downline application developers have a choice. They could build and distribute and support multiple versions of their product, specific
to each distribution. They could write their own installation routines (adding
greatly to cost). Or, they could they could pick a closely related set of
vendors and become a partner in the truest sense of the word.

That is, if the major Linux developers want to have partners. If
they want to stay in business they may find they have no choice.

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

LinuxDevices.com has an interview with a guy from Ericsson Business Innovation’s BLIP, “a small
self-contained Linux-based device that communicates
wirelessly with mobile phones, PDAs, and other kinds of
mobile devices that are equipped with Bluetooth short-range
wireless technology. It’s meant for use in shopping centers,
airports, railway and bus stations, and other public places.”

From IBM.com: “In an uncharacteristic move, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) recently released a security-enhanced version of
Linux — code and all — to the open source community. Part 2 of this developerWorks exclusive delves deeper into the code,
dissecting how the security_av is computed and examining how other SE Linux security features are invoked.”

IDG News Service reports that Sharp has unveiled its Linux-powered
Zaurus MI-E1 PDA at the CeBIT trade show in Germany.

“Already available in Japan, the PDA includes a 3.5 inch color LCD, miniature
keyboard, digital music player, and digital video player that couples with a
companion digital video recorder.”

The BBC reports on the CeBIT technology show in Europe. “This year there will be plenty of companies making products based
on Linux …
Linux has gone from a geek cult to a mainstream product and
companies like Red Hat, Caldera Systems and SuSE will be showing
off their newest versions of the software.”

Slashdot readers dicuss a story from Salon.com about Foresight Institute, a
nonprofit nanotechnology think tank, and IP.com, a Rochester, N.Y.,
start-u, teaming up to “give
open-source programmers and projects the chance to work
within the patent system even as they strive to overturn it.

Specifically, the joint venture will give open-source and
free-software developers the chance to ‘defensively publish.’ “