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Sony agrees to multi-million dollar settlement for ditching Linux on PS3
Sony Corp has agreed to a multi-million dollar settlement that will finally put to rest its long battle over a little-used feature on early PlayStation 3 consoles called OtherOS.
While the PlayStation 3 had its own custom operating system developed by Sony, early editions of the console also included an obscure feature called OtherOS, which allowed tech savvy users to install their own operating system on the device. This led to a number of users turning their game consoles into moderately powerful Linux machines, and some users even connected multiple PlayStation 3 consoles into their own homebrewed, relatively inexpensive computing clusters. One such system was built by the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate, which clustered 1,760 PlayStation 3 consoles into a 500 TFLOPS supercomputer.
OtherOS was available on PlayStation 3 for several years, but Sony suddenly ditched the feature in 2010, citing security concerns and potential vulnerabilities. Newer versions of the PlayStation 3 no longer included the OtherOS feature in their options, and an automated firmware update deactivated the feature on older consoles.
Needless to say, the people who actually used this feature – many of whom purchased a PlayStation 3 specifically for that reason – were not very happy about Sony’s decision, and several filed a class-action lawsuit against the company in 2010. The case was dismissed in 2011, but that dismissal was later overturned in 2014. Now, roughly six years after Sony first removed the OtherOS feature, the company has agreed to a settlement that should finally put the whole fiasco behind it.
The terms of the settlement will pay out $55 to any user who can prove not only that they owned an early version of the PlayStation 3 console with OtherOS, but also that they actually used the feature. Obviously, this probably means that not too many people will be able to cash in on the settlement, but Sony must also pay the attorneys from the case a total of up to $2.25 million, regardless of how many consumers come forward to collect.
According to the attorneys who were part of the lawsuit, the settlement could affect up to 10 million console owners.
Photo by włodi
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