An overview of the trend by commercial entertainment software
producers to support the Linux platform.
“Software companies are increasingly realising that to succeed
they must share and what once seemed like heresy – to give away the
programs that made you rich – is becoming accepted business
practice.”
“Recently, id licencees Activision and Raven announced they
would give away the source code to their popular Heretic and Hexen
games. This follows the decision in December 1997 by id Software to
release the source for its popular Doom game. Within a few days
programmers had ported the game successfully to Linux”
“Incidentally, lead programmer, Dave Taylor, has since been
hired by Transmeta, a super-secretive chip design company funded by
Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, which also employs Linux creator,
Linus Torvalds. Based on patent filings, the company is rumoured to
be working on a chip that will rival Intel in terms of performance,
and threatens Microsoft because it can emulate any operating system
natively.”