A great shame

[Symon]

http://developer.osdl.org/dev/tab/fellow_fund/fund_requests/freedom_force_game

While I can think of valid reasons for a reject, I don't think the quoted reason shows foresight.

[stumpy]

While I would be thrilled if FF engine development found a home in the Linux world, I can see how Zeus' request wouldn't get the consideration it probably deserves in the OSDL.

The biggest problem is that it involves porting a copyrighted property and Zeus, despite his contacts, didn't make it clear that he had any reason to think T2/IG would be receptive to this. He would have had to have indicated some knowledge of substantial inside interest in the idea for this to get off the blocks. Whatever the fellowship fund supports, I doubt they plan on spending any of their funds on buying licenses. Would the Gamebryo (or other) engine code be licensed or available for such a project?

Related, the note Zeus sent (assuming what we can see of it is the whole thing, which seems likely given the other examples) wasn't really a well-fleshed out proposal with an indication of what specifically would be the principle tasks and any sort of estimate of time required to complete them. Most of the other requests, even the rejected ones, were more substantial and specific.

Also, while the fund seems to be defined in a broad manner, I get the impression that it is really more circumscribed than that. 1) there really isn't much money in the fund. There is one approved project (for a tech writer to maintain kernel documentation) and even the "pending" projects listed as "Hold until funds are available" are sometimes a couple years old. And 2) there seems to be a focus on kernel development and projects that support more general development, like tools. The FF project, as great a thing as it would be, would not really support other Linux development unless it turned into a general Linux game API project, which wasn't what Zeus was suggested. (And, I don't know if there may already be such an API.)

Anyway, I don't know much about the inner workings of the Linux world, but there may be a better venue for this sort of request. Zeus' basic pitch - Linux needs games - is a valid one.

[Symon]

Agreed. The reason I think Linux needs games is to garner desktop support.

Linux has been ready for the commercial desktop for a couple of years now. It has pretty much everything needed. The problem is that it isn't seen as 'mainstream' enough.

It isn't ready for home usage as it has almost no game support. Game support would make it much more mainstream and garner acceptance as a commercial desktop, hence the reason I feel the reasons (apparently) short-sighted.

I mean come on, wouldn't everyone here like a computer that never crashed, and didn't need a reboot just because a game had crashed?

My Linux servers at work only go down for hardware changes!