The report can be downloaded here.

Linux is:

• the largest collaborative development project in computing history
• with 15 million lines of code
• developed by 8,000 developers
• from 800 companies
• Activated in 850,000 Android phones every day
• Sold in 700,000 TVs every day
• Run on 9/10 super computers
• All powered by Linux: Google, Twitter, Amazon… and DemonWare!

How linux is built:

Related article: The Linux Talent Draft is On

So much for Call of Duty being gaming’s safely predictable 800lb gorilla.

The people making the new Black Ops II are changing multiplayer. A lot.

Including new info on:

• Scorestreaks replacing Killstreaks
• Class Creation overhaul
• eSport features – livestreaming & shoutcasting

Read full article @ Kotaku

Serial entrepreneurs Sean Blanchfield and Brian McDonnell have opened Dublin’s first start-up lab — which already has a portfolio of three companies up and running.

Blanchfield, who previously founded DemonWare, has teamed up with Brian McDonnell, a former head of development at Jolt Online Gaming, to form their new venture called Scale Front.

Scale Front hopes to emulate in Dublin the success of Betaworks in New York and Science Inc in Los Angeles.

“It can take up to three years to find the right idea — and then another five years to build it up before selling it,” Blanchfield says. “That’s 10 years — or three good shots in a career. But what we want to do is create more companies faster, by developing a portfolio at once.”

Blanchfield says the falling costs of starting tech firms made it easier to “bootstrap” several projects at once.

“You don’t need to be in Silicon Valley anymore,” he says, and aims to prove it.

Scale Front’s businesses include an instant messaging service and Techteams.ie; a directory to help link small businesses to technical engineers capable of developing them anything from phone apps to interactive websites.

Blanchfield adds that Scale Front has had talks with a large east coast of America venture capital fund which is interested in gaining exposure to European start-ups. Blanchfield’s company has also been engaging with indigenous investors.

Re-posted from here.

Ireland’s Jobs Minister Richard Bruton, TD, has established an industry group consisting of executives from the major games companies present in Ireland to spearhead a strategy to create 2,500 new digital games jobs by 2014.

Driving ‘on-the-ground’ collaboration and networking, the Clustering Development Team (CDT) will proactively develop relationships between the foreign and indigenous cohort of games companies, start-ups and well-established multinationals, industry and education institutions, games companies and related sectors.

Read the full article on SiliconRepublic.com

Related article.

For a long time we told ourselves that the notion of Ireland producing big-budget gaming titles was a myth, deluded even. But I’m becoming less sure that it is impossible. Let’s just say the Games Ireland Gathering 2012 this week revealed a wealth of pent-up ambition. The genie is out of the bottle.

Some 350 games industry professionals crowded a room at GIG 2012 in the Gibson Hotel in Dublin yesterday to attend master classes, demos, workshops, you name it, to put Ireland on the map for video games. In addition, there are understood to be 350 jobs available among the firms that attended yesterday.

Entrepreneurs rubbed shoulders with seasoned professionals from Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, PopCap Games, Demonware, Big Fish Games and Electronic Arts.

Read the full article on SiliconRepublic.com