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Welcome one and all for this weeks block…no chunk…nay, slab of opinion. As ever, everyone is welcome and encouraged to scribe their opinions into the comments on this post. Yep, even you oddbals with your wild staring eyes and can of Special Brew in tow are welcome to join in. Lets go…

“In recent years the gaming world has become bigger, more impressive and more diverse, but all within a pretty restrictive set of metrics - if you want to develop for PS3, Wii or XBox you need licenses, special hardware and there is little opportunity to write homebrew games on these systems. Despite utterances from some of the vendors about encouraging some degree of homebrew, the situation is pretty drab. Then mix in the complexity of writing games for PCs and specifically Linux with its array of potential dependencies. Could we instead make our own open games console standard? As in, could we define a machine spec (a chosen set of components), a set of software tools, a development stack and consider this the OpenConsole standard? This could provide a specific target platform, a target set of tools, and potentially allow OEM vendors to release hardware based around said spec. There were similar attempts with the multimedia specification in the late nineties and it died on its arse. Could it work here? Could this be our opportunity to define an open games console standard and get our grubby feet into the gaming ring?“

My take: I think it could work. Sure, there are challenges, and there would be some tough decisions (which graphics cards, which processors, which software etc), but the aim of this exercise would be to make tough decisions, define a platform and then build a strong community around that platform of players and importantly, developers. The platform could potentially offer a predictable gaming experience (which is always a benefit of consoles) and a specific set of development processes to encourage games production. There is no reason why the development platform could not encourage choice (support both C/C++/Java and Python as an example) but have the benefit of consistency and a predicable and known set of resources and abilities.

So what do you think? Share your views in the comments.

Here we are for yet another slab of opinion. This week I have quite an interesting one for you.

Recently the Church Of England have been having a tiff with Sony regarding the use of Manchester Cathedral in the Alien infested first-person-shooter Resistance: Fall Of Man on Playstation 3. The CofE are not only angry that a holy place was a backdrop for such a violent game, but it also undermines their work to banish gun crime from Manchester. They have demanded that the game is removed from store shelves. A meeting at the CofE on Monday to discuss what actions should be made against Sony resulted in the church asking for a large chunk of earnings from the game being donated to the CofE. They also want the game content adjusting to remove Manchester Cathedral and for Sony to support anti-gun groups. Is it right for the CofE to make such demands? Is the use of Manchester Cathedral really that bad? Is it even more odd that there is a problem with the cathedral being used in a game that is clearly science fiction due to the abundance of aliens? Does the game really undermine anti-gun groups? Is there an ethical issue with the CofE taking a large donation of cash from a game they deem so inappropriate?

My take: I can see the church’s problem with Manchester Cathedral being used in the game, and although I personally don’t have an issue with it, I can see why they take issue with it, but I don’t see how this is undermining their efforts banishing gun crime from Manchester - I thought the debate over video game violence spilling into real life was long finished in the late 90s. Then, to add insult to injury, I find the concept of the CofE demanding money from such an unethical game astonishing. On what ethical grounds can you possibly make such a demand - surely it is dirty money?

I think this is a fascinating topic, lets see what everyone thinks. Add you comments as usual to this blog entry.

Ready for another slab of opinion? Need your weekly dose of opinionated ramblings? Don’t we all! This week another interesting question to bend those neurons of yours and raise that blood pressure a little…

We are all increasingly living our life online. With our weblogs telling our daily stories, Flickr showing our holiday snaps, last.fm showing our appalling taste in music and twitter showing that we are sat on the bog, it seems the grandiose plan is that any random on the Internet can know what we are doing all the time. With many of us in the free software community sensitive to privacy, and actively engaged in debates over ID cards, governmental use of information, personal information use by third-parties and more, should we be concerned? Are we increasingly moving into an age where it is normal to live your life online and share your personal details and life with others? Could the governments of the world suggest that mandatory measures to provide information to others are acceptable due to a culture of blogging, flickring and twittering?

My take: our personal information is our own. We choose how much information we unleash on the Internet. Some people share much more than others. It is wrong for a government to translate an open and inclusive culture with regards to information sharing and force it on others. Openness is an individual trait with hugely different lines drawn in the sand, and as such we cannot judge an entire culture by the small demographic of fully open individuals. The vast majority of the world are not living their lives online.

As ever, leave your opinions in the comments on this article. I am sure we will get some interesting opinion on this subject.

Here we are for another slab of opinion. As ever, scribe your views into the comments on this post. Here goes:

Running a website can be expensive, be it a personal website or a site for an Open Source project. Speaking personally, I run sites like jonobacon.org and recreantview.org which are personal, but also jokosher.org and lugradio.org for Open Source projects - all of these sites get hit quite a bit. Currently they are funded out of my pocket and Aq who also runs the machine. Is it cool to put ads on a website (such as the ones on jonobacon.org now) to contribute to these costs? Does this detract from the ethos of free software? Are ads always evil and never acceptable or a perfectly reasonable way of covering these costs? Does the type of ad, size, and/or relevance affect your view?

My take: I think moderate use of ads on personal or Open Source websites are fine, but overuse is frustrating for the reader. The key thing is not the ads but what happens to the money. On a personal website it is fine for the owner to pocket the money, but for an Open Source project, the money should be tracked by the project and be used for the benefit of the project and not go to an individual.

So what do you think? Click that Comments link and share your view!

I am always keen to hear peoples views on various subjects, and something I have been thinking of doing for a while is to just throw out a discussion topic and ask everyone to fill in their thoughts. This could be on a range of subjects, most likely related to free software, free culture, music and politics. Suggestions for slabs should go to [slabs AT jonobacon DOT org](mailto:slabs AT jonobacon DOT org). So lets get on with our first one, this slab inspired by a discussion we had on LUGRadio and another discussion in the bar at the UDS…

Should we in the free software community discriminate against fields of endeavor? That is, should we say “this piece of free software cannot be used for this particular use, be it as extreme as terrorism or as innocent as a particular lifestyle choice? If so, how do we enforce this, and how do we define what are suitable fields that our software can be used in? Even then, is denying use of our software in less-than-savory and/or illegal fields really going to have an impact? Is a Mafia don going to care about a line in a license?

My take: my initial hunch is that we should in no way restrict our software in any field, but there is a theoretical temptation to explore the issue and to see if it is possible to stop our software being used for nefarious means. However, I suspect this is firstly impossible to enforce and secondly, there is no clear distinction about which fields you would want to restrict. Take for example a nationalist political party that enforces the view that only a specific race or nationality could reside in their country - on one hand this is abundant racism, but on the other hand there is an argument that they should have a right to lay out their manifesto and the voting public should be responsible for seeing that they never get into power. So we have a field that can divide opinion, and how would we definitively define where free software fits in? So, in conclusion I think discrimination against fields of endeavor is theoretically tempting to make the world that little bit better, but has too many loose ends and an inability to enforce that makes it nothing but a pipe dream.

So what do you think? Scribe your views in the comments.