Somewhat of an old news now but...

OpenSource taking it too far?

[AgentSmith]

Mystery Man Revealed in Microsoft Xbox Hack Contest
[story.news.yahoo.com...]

"There is no business justification; that's not why I did it," Robertson told News.com of his rationale behind the contest. "I did it because I thought people should have the choice to run the software they want on the hardware of their choice."

Perhaps someone here can enlighten a simple-minded dude here. MS invested $$$ and time to develop Xbox. Afterall, it is MS' product...so, WTH is wrong with Xbox exclusively operates in MS OS?

Why go through whole mess of trouble to change something that's working just fine? I mean...will Linux make Xbox perform so much better (if anything, will it make it perform any better period?)

I am raising an arguement here...but seriously...is this really necessary? Pretty pathetic...but maybe I am too simple-minded to understand the scope of OpenSource's ambition...or something...

[korkus2000]

Agreed. Nobody looks down at playstation or nintendo for their operating system. It is just another attack at microsoft.

[andreasfriedrich]

I believe there is a linux version for both Sega Dreamcast and some Nintendo box.

I wouldnīt consider it an attack on MS. Itīs just that trying to hack into such a console is soo much more fun than playing the games which get boring really fast. ;)

Andreas

[korkus2000]

In all reality it is just a publicity stunt. And yes I know many a hacker who loves to change the inner workings of a console. Should it be a microsoft thing or just I hacked a console thing.

[sun818]

Here's a good read on an XBox Hacker [icronic.com]. Much like Hewlett-Packard, the Xbox is just a distribution channels for other products the company sells. In HP's case, it is ink and paper. For Microsoft it is the games. If someone hacks the Xbox into a usable unit, then all the profits from selling games is gone.

[seth_wilde]

Instead of trying to fight hackers messing with the console.. sony took a different route and released a linux kit for playstation.

[us.playstation.com...]

These people aren't trying to improve the performance of the console. Infact the console games won't even work when linux is running. This is just something they enjoy doing. And after all the anti opensource fud M$ has put out of the years, I'm sure using an xbox (which microsoft sells for a loss) to run linux is that much more enjoyable.