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Programming Software Linux Technology

Where Can I Find Linux Porters? 375

Posted by Cliff from the a-call-for-help dept.
David asks: "Many small software developers would love to get their software up and running on Linux, but where can competent Linux porters be found? I ask because, a while ago, I released a shareware game called Lugaru. I developed it for Mac OS with the intention of porting it to Windows and Linux. I was able to easily find several developers willing to port it to Windows at a reasonable cost (a fair portion of the sales) but I am clueless about how to find people with the Linux expertise. It is frustrating because I get many emails and forum queries asking me about a Linux version. I really want it to happen and am willing to pay - the problem simply is that I don't know how to go about finding Linux developers. So, I ask Slashdot."
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Where Can I Find Linux Porters? More

Where Can I Find Linux Porters?

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  • sourceforge.net (Score:2, Informative)

    by rd4tech ( 711615 ) *
    How about posting a request on sourceforge.net with the description of the needed porting skills?

    Or even looking at the already ported applications similar to your and asking the developers if they are available, or can they point someone else?

    • Re:sourceforge.net (Score:5, Informative)

      by hometack ( 855072 ) * on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:05PM (#13235304)
      He made it clear this is a commercial project, so Sourceforge is obviously not where he should be looking for help. For those out of the know, Sourceforge only assists those who have open source projects.
      • It's always hard to find people who are willing to work on a percentage basis. How complicated is the game? Is it the kind of thing that can be pieced out, or done quickly?

  • India? Russia? Romania? Argentina? (Score:4, Informative)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:01PM (#13235266) Homepage Journal
    I get cold contact requests from these guys on LinkedIn [linkedin.com] all the time. I imagine if you sign up, you can find them pretty easily too.

  • Interested (Score:4, Informative)

    by krakrjak ( 227602 ) <`krakrjak' `at' `gmail.com'> on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:03PM (#13235284) Homepage
    I have a small team of Linux developers that are looking for some work of this nature. We would be more than happy to help you. Send me an email or message on /.

    I'll update my profile to have my current email address. krakrjak at gmail dot com

    • I have a small team of Linux developers that are looking for some work of this nature.

      What's funny is that I have personally offered to a few Win32 shareware/freeware developers to port their apps to Linux or to a cross-platform toolkit (wxWidgets is my choice), FOR FREE! The responses were all either absent (i.e., no response), or they were not interested.

      Completely weird.

      • Re:Interested (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sentientbrendan ( 316150 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @07:15PM (#13235905)
        not so weird...
        if you're just some random guy asking for their source.

      • Re:Interested (Score:3, Informative)

        by krakrjak ( 227602 )
        What might be happening is that the windows developers feel like by porting to Linux they would have to give up the Shareware portion and go completely Open Source. I would be comfortable porting Windows/OSX Shareware software as shareware software on Linux. Maybe these developers need a little more information before they jump into the Linux pond.

  • Make it open source (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alvieboy ( 61292 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:03PM (#13235289) Homepage
    Make it open source and you will surely get lots of volunteers.

    Does shareware still gives money these days? I doubt, but again it's only my humble opinion.

    • Well that would sort of guarantee it wouldn't make any money wouldn't it? If customers are asking for linux editions, I would have to guess there is a market.

      Hmmm, get a few bucks off of shareware or make no money off of open source. Tough one.

      Also it should be noted, that many open source projects don't get enough volunteers and end up half finished on source forge rotting with some Alpha .03 release. If you pay people to finish it, I can almost guarantee you they'll keep working until it's done.

    • Re:Make it open source (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Reverend528 ( 585549 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:32PM (#13235571) Homepage
      Does shareware still gives money these days?

      It probably helps to get free advertising from the slashdot editors.

      • Re:Make it open source (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @08:45PM (#13236523)
        It probably helps to get free advertising from the slashdot editors.

        Worked for me. I had no idea it existed until this article. Now that I've seen the page, I can't wait to try the game.

        I know it's a little off topic, but I've been very impressed with some of the independant games I've seen. Another favorite of mine is Tread Marks that was about tanks that race and shoot each other with the futuristic weapons they pick up. It had deformable terrain (picture big craters) that worked very well. I haven't seen that feature in any game since.

        Now this one comes along with karate bunnys. Now that's cool. And you can be sure I haven't seen it anywhere else.

        I guess I have a point somewhere... Oh yeah, here goes: This is something I haven't seen before. It looks cool. It's something I'd probably never see unless it was on /. A) I'm glad this got attention and B) I wish more independant games would get the same attention.

        TW

  • Try guru.com (Score:2, Informative)

    by richardellisjr ( 584919 )
    I beleive the site is www.guru.com, it lets you post project offers, and potential developers/clients bid on them.
  • It's one thing to port applications. It's another thing to port a game. If only there was such a thing as universal graphics library that ATI, Nvidia and every other game vendor agrees on for all macs, linux and windows...the gaming world wouldn't be so one sided.

    • ### If only there was such a thing as universal graphics library that ATI, Nvidia and every other game vendor agrees on for all macs, linux and windows...

      Already invented, its called OpenGL. In combination with SDL and maybe something like Physicfs for the file access it brings you to all platform with little or no code changes, just a matter of recompiling.

  • I find Linux porters in the following places (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:08PM (#13235332) Homepage Journal
    Linux trains

    Linux cruise ships - plus you can learn how to code in Perl at the same time on a cruise.

    But seriously, just because you want to port something doesn't mean other people want to port it, so you would be better off trying to contact people interested in your game in the first place, who can code for Linux or who have ported before, as they are most likely easily "rewarded" by special insights into how the game works, or you could also reward them with special game tokens (like having an island named after them or a building in a standard or Linux-only map) or other things.

    Hope this helps.
    • "But seriously, just because you want to port something doesn't mean other people want to port it..."


      People get interested in doing works when there's money involved. Advicing him to find a hobbyist to do it in exchange of game tokens is probably not what he is looking for.
    • It seems to me you're assuming he was looking for someone to do this without receiving money, but he said he gave people a part of the sales for other ports. He's selling a commercial game and doesn't seem to be expecting someone to port it for free. Hell, it'd be easier legally to pay the person.

      My advice is to find a forum where these people hang out and post some messages. But he'd have to be careful about appearing to be spam and copying the same message on lots of forums. I understand my advice isn
      • Honestly, if all he's offering is a portion of the sales it might not be a good idea. I mean, how much is he going to charge for it, and how big a percentage would an actual porter get out of that? How many copies of this game (which I've never heard of, honestly) could a Linux port be expected to sell? How portable is the code?

        If the code is such that it would end up being a major rewrite, and the market isn't all that big, and the cut offered isn't juicy enough, then it isn' t worth the time.

        Not saying an
    • But seriously, just because you want to port something doesn't mean other people want to port it, so you would be better off trying to contact people interested in your game in the first place, who can code for Linux or who have ported before, as they are most likely easily "rewarded" by special insights into how the game works, or you could also reward them with special game tokens (like having an island named after them or a building in a standard or Linux-only map) or other things.

      Did you even read t
  • Sample comments from the linked forum thread:

    "I love linux (i am typing on free bsd right now)..."

    "I think Mac OSX is closer to Linux than it is to Windows."

    "It is, simply because Mac OSX is Unix and Unix came from Linux."

    "I may be wrong...more like it's a variation of Linux or something...I don't have a Linux..."

    And that's in a single, not very long, thread! (OK, the 2nd isn't exactly wrong, just irrelevant...)

    Anyway, good luck to him but I think $20 for a game is above a reasonable Linux price point. For

    • "For the most part, you can't sell Linux desktop users much of anything (except distros, and barely that) but you might be able to sell a decent number of games like this at $5, but not $20."

      I can only speak for myself, but I spend $5 per month on Transgaming and then go out and buy $50 shrinkwrapped games on a semi-regular basis. $20 seems like a great price for a reasonable game, and his sounds pretty interesting.

      You can't even get a movie ticket in most countries for $5 (try $10)... why would it be too m
    • but I think $20 for a game is above a reasonable Linux price point I don't know. Doom 3, Postal 2, and several other games sold well under Linux for much more than $20. I'm looking forward to downloading the demo once available and if I like it I'll be more than happy to fork over $20. Especially if it will encourage further development for the Linux platform.

      The real question is, not will it sell, but will the licensing allow me to purchase a license for the game and have all platforms available to p
      • Like I said later, "you might be able to sell a decent number of games like this at $5". Yeah, there are high-profile games like Doom 3 that do sell for well over $20 (although even id does Linux ports more for fun than for profit) but I'll be surprised if a low-profile shareware game can sell enough $20 registrations to make the port worthwhile.

        Again, I wish him luck, though.

    • That use to be true but not so much these days. In the past I would have agreed with you but recently things have started to change. We've had numerous requests from Europe for a Linux port of our software. Enough to make it worth while (if we had time to port it). Our product is around the $50 mark.

      Basically what has happened is Linux has moved from the Bleeding Edge market to the Corporate Desktop. Our company has also baught a package for $300.
    • >> Anyway, good luck to him but I think $20 for a game is above a reasonable Linux price point

      I believe you are right. these guys [garagegames.com] sell indie games based on the torque engine (which they license to hoddyists/indie devs). Many of the games are win/Mac/Linux, but they sell something like 5% to linux users The rest being Win/Mac with lots of MAC sales - they buy. Apparently we (linux users) are a cheap bunch of mofos...

  • Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)

    by spyrral ( 162842 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:14PM (#13235397) Journal
    Have you tried posting a story to /.? That would definately get you in touch with a large number of linux devs.
    • Everyone on slashdot runs Windows, they only talk about running Linux. You must be new here.

      Yes before anyone mentions it, I saw his UID :)
  • While this doesn't answer your code directly, depending on what toolkits you use etc. will depend on how easy it is to make a Linux port. For example, if you use a large amount of Cocoa-only library, it will end up being a large amount of work. Some libraries (remember Loki?) particularly may be easy to use on Mac and Windows platforms, but not on more free platforms.

    This is in part why the SDL was created. Linked with openGL and openAL, it should be much less laborious for a Linux hacker to get your game w
    • In TFA, the guy who ported it to Windows said he used SDL, OpenGL, and OpenAL.
      • In the forum comments, yes (technically I wouldn't consider it TFA..)

        Assuming the windows port doesn't have any other major depencies (e.g. to play video, etc.) it should be fairly easy to port to Linux. Especially considering (at least at one point [I'm assuming]) it was compiled under gcc.

        And I would hazard a guess most competent programmers with some Linux experience should be able to take on such a project.

  • One address: (Score:5, Informative)

    by obi ( 118631 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:16PM (#13235416)
    Ask Icculus.

    Ryan C Gordon is the one to thank for the Unreal ports, and a Linux game porter community surely exists at his site.

    Check out http://icculus.org/ [icculus.org]

    • Re:One address: (Score:3, Informative)

      by msphil ( 28085 )
      Ryan is a super-busy person, with a decent number of ports under his belt and a lot of contracts already on the table. However, he does seem to be a touchstone, of sorts, of modern porting efforts.

      I assume that, since there's a Mac version, there's an OpenGL renderer for it (looking at the webside, it looks like it's 3D). That should ease the porting effort a bit.

      Depending on what you're aiming for, exactly, you could also potentially contract with Linux Game Publishing (http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com [linuxgamepublishing.com]
      • I didn't mean Ryan specifically, what I meant was that the icculus site was probably a good way to find more information, or even a porter. Like you said, "he does seem to be a touchstone of modern porting efforts"
      • Judging from the FAQ [icculus.org] and either known defunct or no longer available websites, the only porting house still in business is LGP. At least it is the only one I am aware of. While not a programmer myself, I do try to keep on top of the Linux Gaming News.

        I just want to say thanks to LGP as well.
  • I've heard of lazy before but this is ridiculous. Surely a cd, even with the printed title sheet can't weigh more than 300-400 grams?

  • I would suggest finding some windows porters that can use a cross-platform toolkit of some sort e..g Trolltech's QT [trolltech.com] or WXWidgets [wxwidgets.org]. Even better if you can do it yourself, although it would need a C++ background which might be difficult if you are used to objective C.

    I think it also depends on what you are porting. The above might be better for non-game programs. QT only if you can absorb the cost of getting yourself or other devs the licence for the toolkit, or wxwidgets if you can handle the fact that peo
    • Lugaru's a 3rd person "shooter" type game where your avatar is a Lagamorph- a humaniform rabbit.

      Since it's 3D, your suggestions are a little less than helpful for this gent's problems...

      Now, considering that they're coming from MacOS to Windows to Linux (from what I gathered from the forum discussions...) it's not as hard as it could be. Technically, the studio could do it all themselves as most of the libraries for game development of this type tend to be the same ones for Linux and Windows as well.
  • Can you post entries on Monster, HotJobs, Dice, etc.?
  • First think I thought: "A geek pub, maybe?"

    My second thought was to imagine a group of snappy-looking bellhops asking "We'll be happy to carry your Knoppix CDs up to the room for you, sir."

  • lgp (Score:2)

    by imr ( 106517 )
    LGP might be interrested and they know people who might be willing to port a game.

    If you have a game publishing proposal, please see our contacts page for information:
    http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/contacts.php [linuxgamepublishing.com]
  • impossible to find. even a scan of it. coolest tech posters ever and can't get them.
  • Hyperion Entertainment [hyperion-e...inment.biz] does ports to MacOS and Linux for hire, specializing in games. If you're willing to pay, it's doable.
  • If there is intent to port a project to other platforms, then it is very important that one make some very critical decisions at the beginning of a project in order to make it a tractable problem.

    That means disciplining yourself right out of the starting gate to either using portable API's and toolkits, or else isolating all non-portable code into a what should work out to be a very small amount of the overall code. If the code contains more than about 20% non-portable code, then generally speaking it's

  • You'll probably want to change the name of your game as the folks at Lugaru Software [lugaru.com], makers of an excellent Emacs clone for the PC, will likely seek to have words with you if you don't.

    I'm a big fan of Epsilon, Lugaru's main product. It's great. It ran on the DOS and Windows platforms years before gnu-emacs did. They have a great printed manual, and their pricing has always been reasonable for a highly polished commercial product.
  • Try this site [rentacoder.com]. Open bidding for software projects.
  • http://www.freshports.org/ [freshports.org] If they work on FreeBSD for free, most of them can be persuaded with money to port to Linux as well -- it is not that much worse :-)
  • You should make the demo run for..

    28 days
    6 hours
    42 minutes
    12 seconds

    Pay close attention.
    You could miss something.
    • gamedev is just about the worst possible place to solicit for linux developers. the people in the forums there are barely competent enough to install a distro, let alone compile anything. (the entire gamedev site is pretty noobish really).

      there are much better places to go -- gamedev is a waste of time. other /. posters have made good suggestions (icculus, rentacoder, etc).

  • good luck with your game. I hope you find the talent that you need.
  • How about here [java.net]?
  • as good a place as I can think of. You can specify your request based on contract length/type, and treat it as a regular job (since in the ask/. you mentioned you'd be willing to pay).

    If you are going to look it at like a job, treat it like a job and do job searchs, interviews, etc. If your org isnt big enough to really justify this (or its not a really big market segment to you), then my only other idea would be to see if there is a CS department at the local college that is willing to farm out people (aga
  • I thought this guy was looking for someone to carry Linus around.
    Then I thought he wanted someone to carry Linux CDs around.
    Glad I read the article!

  • WINE? (Score:2)

    by femto ( 459605 )
    I always though that was the intention of WINE [winehq.com]?

    WINE provides a set of Windows compatible APIs running on top of Linux. In theory this allows a developer to trivially 'port' to Linux by doing a recompilation of their unmodified windows source, against WINE. The result is a binary which runs natively on Linux.

    Then there is the (possibly) more well known binary compatibility aspect of WINE, which allows Windows binaries to be executed with Linux.

    • The demo runs perfectly well for me in a stock wine install. Though these isn't a perfect option, especially since it still leaves non-x86 users without a way to use it.

      • Re:WINE? (Score:5, Informative)

        by femto ( 459605 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @07:58PM (#13236204) Homepage
        The binary compatibility mode of wine is restricted to x86 machines (since wine doesn't emulate the x86 instruction set).

        The source compatibility mode is not restricted [winehq.org] to x86 machines!

        You take the source code for the program to be 'ported' and the source to wine (available under the LGPL) and compile them both on your target machine. The result is a binary (with the WINE libraries compiled in) that will run on any (non-x86) architecture running Linux.

        That's how it works in theory (your real life experience may differ).

        • Re:WINE? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by njchick ( 611256 )
          That's only in theory. In fact, very few architectures are supported, and x86_64 is not one of them. I tried to port Wine (just the library) to x86_64 recently, but it turned out to be a lot of work and even required knowledge of assembler (for such things as "atomic compare and exchange"). Volunteers are welcome!

  • Linux game ports (Score:5, Informative)

    by typical ( 886006 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @07:42PM (#13236072) Journal
    A couple thoughts.

    First, I've seen various system-specific mailing lists be used by people who are interested in hiring someone to do a job. Perl-specific mailing lists, SDL-specific mailing lists, and so forth. This is one way to find people familiar with a system.

    Second, if you are doing a closed-source game for Linux, be aware that binary compatibility is a *bitch*. I have done a fair amount of work on getting older Linux binary games that I've purchased to work, and I'm pretty much convinced that it's not reasonable to just ship "a Linux binary" in the same sense that one ships a Windows binary that one simply expects to work. In the past, companies that have attempted to do Linux ports of their games have generally not had a binary that continues to work for more than a year or several. The Linux world is not really oriented around guaranteeing binary compatability -- vendors do not generally feel constrained to make sure that software written for their distro a few versions back continues to work. This is *not* a minor undertaking. Much as I love Linux, I would suggest that a better target for a "second platform port" would be the Mac. You appear to have done that, and if you're really pleased with the results, you've made your money back and all, then it might be worthwhile to consider Linux. In general, though, folks attempting to do commercial Linux releases have not done very well -- I understand that Jagged Alliance 2, for instance, shipped something like a couple hundred copies in the first few weeks. That was a pretty high-profile game with a solid port, and no fancy requirements (3d, etc).

    Third, be aware that the state of 3d under Linux sucks. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. ATI and NVidia ship binary drivers that produce friction from the kernel folks. The fastest cards with open-source drivers are some of ATIs, and those drivers are *not* rock-solid. Linux was actually better off in the 3d arena a couple of years back, when Matrox had good open source support and ATI was allowing open source drivers -- the state of Linux 3d has actually regressed.

    Fourth, if you do this, if at *all* possible, use the existing standard libraries. SDL is the closest thing to a standard game development environment out there across Linux distros. SDL_image and SDL_mixer are also good sidekicks. SDL has lots of oddball competitors that are more or less a pain to get running on various systems.

    Fifth, take a look at the strategies that Loki and the other Linux game developers used for deploying patches, for dealing with shared/static libraries, for handling installation/uninstallation, and so forth. The installer world for Linux is not currently suitable to do a Windows-style "download this file and use it" and vendors currently aren't really set up (with the possible exception of Linspire) to provide for-sale applications through their package management system.

    Sixth, *let users specify devices*. Nothing is more annoying than some random developer who decides that /dev/dsp is always going to be the sound card and /dev/js0 is always going to be the joystick. If you want to detect them, great, but let the user specify.

    Seventh, be aware that Linux currently is not capable of maintaining joystick orderings, so if the user has two joysticks, one may wind up being /dev/js0 on a particular boot and /dev/js1 on the next boot.

    Eighth, furries rock. Good job.

    Nineth, while this almost certainly isn't appropriate for your game or your scale of operation, be aware that some of the most technically successful cross-platform vendors have built VMs and then targetted that VM. Sierra's AGI and SCI engines, Lucasarts' SCUMM, Infocom's Z-engine (and the free competitor, TADS) all made for generations of highly-portable adventure games (yet none of these games were extremely sluggish or technically limited for their day).

    Tenth, let your users toggle between full screen and wi
  • Check out rentacoder.com.

    Specify your criteria, escrow some money, and wait for the bids to roll in.

  • Ryan C. Gordon [icculus.org] would be the first person I'd contact to do a port of a Windows game to Linux. If he isn't able to do it (probably due to time restraints, rather than anything else), he will probably know someone who can.

  • Mac Demo not working (Score:2, Informative)

    by zhenga ( 770390 )
    I downloaded the demo for the Mac (LugaruMac.zip) but I cant even play it because there's no working executable or launcher included.. :(

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