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 Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2024 4:38 pm Post subject: Peter Hunnisett of TransGaming |
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Interview by Munky:
Peter Hunnisett of TransGaming
TransGaming is a company that produces the well known Windows emulator WineX. The product is of the few that properly emulates the DirectX engine for the GNU/Linux platform. WineX has grown to be a GNU/Linux gamer's bestfriend.
USALUG: Please give a brief description of your job at TransGaming, and yourexperience with Open Source.
Peter Hunnisett: My name is Peter Hunnisett and my title at TransGaming Technologies is Manager of Software Development. I'm responsible for Linux products and new technology which to most of your readers will mean WineX and Point2Play; but it also includes The Sims, Kohan ports and more. I started with open source back in 1998 with the Wine project and that is what dovetailed into my employment at TransGaming Technologies. I've also made some small contributions to Phex, a P2P servent, and have been a user of Linux for almost a decade now (where does the time go?)
USALUG: In accordance to Richard Stallman's GNU project and this quote: "``Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understandthe concept, you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in ``free beer.''" Do you feel that the "free" or "freedom" of Open Source must reflect money?
Peter Hunnisett: Prepackaged WineX is neither free as in beer or free as is speech. While you can get a free, as in beer, version through CVS the intention of this is to provide access for developers and those who can't pay for WineX for a variety of reasons. The CVS version, however, is not free as is speech as you are not able to use it for commercial purposes and a bunch of other things that fall under the licenses that WineX uses.However, we do contribute the non core code to the ReWind project (http://sourceforge.net/projects/rewind) under the X11 license which is about as "free speech" as you can get. Alot of this code then is taken by the Wine project as the X11 license allow them to relicense our code under the more restrictive LGPL.
USALUG: What is TransGaming's reason for breaking away from the tradition ofthe Open Source community and charging money for their product?
Peter Hunnisett: There is quite a history of companies and individuals being involved with open source right from the beginning charging for their products and I don't think that we're pionering in any way. For a small 5 USD per month subscription TransGamer get support through both the fourms and email, prepackaged versions of WineX which do include some functionality which cannot be distributed in source form, Point2Play the offical graphical front end for WineX in package form, the ability to vote on how WineX and Point2Play should be evolving. Additionally they get discounts at our webstore on lots of cool Linux games, some of which TransGaming has ported, and some nice gift choices. So TransGamers get alot for a low price.
USALUG: What can we expect to see coming from TransGaming and WineX in thenext few months?
Peter Hunnisett: Most of what you'll see in the coming months is what TransGamers have expressed that they want. WineX 3.2, which was released November 18th 2024, introduced support for Max Payne 2, Homeworld 2 and Warcraft III: Frozen Throne which were some of the hot new titles and titles that our voters wanted. WineX 3.2.1, released about a month later, improved the gaming experience. Given the most recent voting, our next releases will most likely include Steam, which should pave the way for alot of the technology in Half Life 2, and perhaps Halo as well as the usual torrent of technological progress.From Point2Play we plan to provide a release very soon which will provide an opportunity for TransGamers to localize it to their native language to enhance their gaming experience along with some other goodies to make it easier to configure games. At some point in the future, Point2Play will be integrated with an improved games database.
USALUG: Is support of DirectX 9 on its way?
Peter Hunnisett: Absolutely! TransGamers have just recently indicate that they want to see us working on the DirectX 9 technology and so we're starting to turn our focus towards how we can provide the functionality that the first generation of DX9 games are using. In the past months we've spent a few days here and there adding skeletal functionality for d3d9.dll which provides a surprising amount of functionality given the effort but we will be bringing a more concerted effort to bare in the coming months.
USALUG: Do you ever feel that users will be able to run DirectX games on GNU/Linux without worrying if it is supported?
Peter Hunnisett: Without a question Point2Play with WineX will be able to provide support for more and more DirectX applications in the coming releases. There will, however, always be corner cases where Linux or OpenGL just don't provide the functionality required to reimplement this functionality. In most cases, the number of games which use these features is limited and shouldn't be an issue. Occasionally we find enough programs which use a feature and then we have to roll up our sleeves. However, we'll have a big chance to implement DirectX 9 before DirectX 10 (or DirectX Next as it's being presently touted) since it's due to arrive with Longhorn.
USALUG: Do you feel that developers and Open Source companies should ONLYcharge for their applications?
Peter Hunnisett: I believe that there is nothing wrong with receiving renumeration for the blood, sweat, tears and lack of sleep shed over a release. It's all this painful non fun stuff that actually provides the polish to a release and truely makes a quality product. For a big release we'll easily spend more than 2 weeks squashing bugs and regressions in many many many games. Believe me when I say that bug fixing is far less glamourous than implementing the sexy new features and testing 20 installers is hardly much fun as Lucas Smithen our QA lead can attest. However, one thing that is noteworthy when it comes to the price of a free (beer) open source product: you are probably not getting access to dedicated high quality support. Never underestimate the value of that support.
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