Sony agrees to pay millions for abandoning Linux on PS3

Remember how Sony launched the PS3 with “OtherOS” support, so you could install Linux or whatever other PowerPC-compatible OS you could finagle onto your shiny new next-gen gaming system? And then remember how just a couple years later Sony discontinued support for OtherOS, with a new system update that removed the functionality?

Well, some people never forgot. An on-and-off-again class action lawsuit, started back in 2010, is finally bearing fruit. Sony has agreed to a settlement with the litigants to pay $55 to anyone who can prove they owned an OtherOS-capable PS3 (what the settlement adorably refers to as a “Fat PS3,” as opposed to the slim model that never supported OtherOS) and actually used that functionality. If you simply knew about OtherOS and intended to use it on your Fat PS3, you can get $9. If you are the lawyers who brought this suit, you get $2.25 million, no matter how much you care about software freedom.

The terms still have to be agreed on by a California federal judge; this is just a proposal. There’s a hearing scheduled for July 19th in Oakland.

About 10 million people owned Fat PS3s, and probably a much smaller subset of those people flirted with Linux on their console. If this settlement is approved, the bill for Sony will still be in the millions.

Between this, and that Amazon money everybody just got in their inbox, soon we’ll all be rich enough to buy another cool consumer electronics device from a company who will in no way mistreat us!

Btw, it’s still illegal to jailbreak a console. Remember how Sony launched the PS3 with “OtherOS” support? That was great.