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How Will Steam on GNU/Linux Affect Software Freedom?
rms has published his thoughts on Steam coming to GNU/Linux. He notes that the availability of proprietary games may very well help spread GNU/Linux (but the FSF prioritizes spreading software freedom). And, you're better off at least having a Free operating system instead of Windows: "My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm. But there is also an indirect effect: what does the use of these games teach people in our community? Any GNU/Linux distro that comes with software to offer these games will teach users that the point is not freedom. Nonfree software in GNU/Linux distros already works against the goal of freedom. Adding these games to a distro would augment that effect."
Or: How will the FOSS community affect Valve? Already they've contributed a bit to the graphics stack, hired a few folks from inside the community, etc. But Steam also makes use of DRM and distributes software in ways that are opposed to the ideals of many in the FOSS community (and even the wider Free Culture community). Given Gabe Newell's professed love for openness, might we see their company culture infiltrated?
Talk about missing the point of software completely.
...who intentionally confuse the freedoms of the user with the freedoms of the proprietary software developer.
Linux has failed on the desktop for the past decades and will continue to fail on the desktop in the future decades.
Face it the ONLY thing bringing Linux to the desktop currently is GAMING.
Would you prefer Origins on Linux or Steam? Frankly I would prefer neither as both are VERY ANTI COMPETITIVE but Linux needs something and this could be it.
frankly, i don't see the point why some of us should be ideologues in the community. it's divisive and it may not allow for greater efficiency. I'd go with what Linus said "whatever works best"
Android devices are mostly locked down in ways that are hard to circumvent. Arguably, Android is already quite bad for software freedom.
There are plenty of free game engines out there, we don't need all of them to be free. The assets will never be free either, and that's the product in the end, that's what the game is all about.
The engine being free would make supporting the games in the future easier, but with the underlying architecture of the platform being open and well documented, it isn't impossible.
Twinstiq, game news
I say this as a free software developer: At some point, you just want software and don't care about the politics. Not everything has to be political -- just look at Chick-Fil-A as an example of how this way of thinking can backfire.
I play games for entertainment, not to make a political statement. Let's keep the two worlds separate.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Games are coming to Linux!
RMS will have kittens and tell people how to speak and think in the name of 'freedom'.
Man, Linux used to be cool before all these newbs showed up with their games.
Free software is most certainly an admirable goal.
But if market forces and existing conditions mean that proprietary software is the most expedient way to get the software delivered to the customer, then that's what will happen.
Valve gets Linux bugs fixed, and they can make legitimate and credible arguments for things that should be changed about Linux. There is no doubt that they are contributing to the long term health and stability of linux.
If the vendor has proprietary software and the customer finds it to be the best solution, the job of the operating system is to get out of the way and allow the customer to do what he wants.
The goal of GNU and the FSF was never to lock out commercial providers, but to provide a free core system. Nothing is being broken, stolen, taken away, or rescinded.
The whole article is nothing but pseudo-pedantic flame bait.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I don't follow the politics of Linux so please bear with me. Couldn't this be a paradox because Steam coming to Linux could be a game changer, pardon the pun, for mainstream adoption but could it not open up patent claims against it? While Microsoft, for instance, is currently having a benign attitude towards Linux with their Hyper-V support in the Kernel, couldn't they go into attack mode and wheel out patent claims if they feel their MS Windows Gaming/XBox platforms threatened by Steam on Linux?
that emacs and gcc were written on HPUX systems
what's the "lesson" to be learned from these programs?
The title of this article is begging the question because it assumes (without evidence) that having Steam available on GNU/Linux will affect software freedom. I'm not saying that it won't, but I'd prefer to see some evidence instead of just taking it for granted that it will. Much better would have been simply, Will Steam on Gnu/Linux affect software freedom?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
keep talking to straw men
many of us work with paid-for RHEL subscriptions, and our software drives sales of more RHEL licenses
many of us find linux bugs, both in the kernel and in supporting apps, and we report those bugs, providing great value.
do you have any data supporting your assertion that linux users are freeloaders?
windows users got their OS for free when they bought their computer. What makes them different?
Valve has opened up all of their games to the modders, accusing them of not being free is ignorant.
Why has it automatically "failed" simply because it's not on every Tom, Dick and Harry's desktop?
So far, GNU/Linux on the desktop has "failed" to become widespread enough that users expect to have local support options of the "carry in your PC and we'll fix it" sort. And until Valve's recent announcement, it has "failed" to attract developers of major killer apps.
I see this as a great thing because games is pretty much the last reason I have for a dual boot system. Anything serious I do under Linux as its a far better tool, but some of my favorite games are windows-only so I still need a windows partition around. Assuming they start to port most windows games to Linux too, I can finally dump my windows partition.
I know gaming won't change any minds in corporate IT depts, but at least it may encourage non-technical users to try Linux at home. It seems that a large reason corporates have for justifying continuing to force their employees onto Windows is that "everyone is more familiar with Windows than Linux". Lets hope steam on Linux can help to change that too.
I consider games not to be "software" for some time, it became part of entertainment industry, like films or music. It is created by large studios where programmers are only one ever smaller part of team. For this reason, I consider Steam equivalent of YouTube: channel that enables me to consume commercial entertainment, on my free OS, that remains fully GPL (minus GPU driver).
839*929
Android devices are mostly locked down in ways that are hard to circumvent.
Except for the ones that aren't.
Historically, the handsets that are more locked down have been cheaper to own than the ones that aren't. When smartphone service costs $200 plus $70 per month with a subsidized, locked phone or $550 plus $70 per month with an unlocked phone, people are going to choose the subsidized, locked phone. Only recently did the U.S. GSM carriers introduce affordable prepaid smartphone plans that clearly separate the price of the device from the price of the service.
In the beginning of Android Market (now Google Play Store), only a few countries had paid applications. To reach a wide audience, developers had to make their applications free of charge. This set a price expectation of $0.00 among users, and I'm not sure whether this has cleared up even with the expansion of Google Wallet to a larger market.
Perhaps the lesson is that the GNU Project did a good job of bootstrapping its work off proprietary systems when the underlying specifications (POSIX, C, etc.) were well defined. High-production-value games can't as easily be bootstrapped, to the best of my knowledge, because their specifications are not so well defined. And when a game's specs are well defined, you tend to see lawsuits against others reimplementing them (Konami v. Roxor; Tetris v. Xio).
Much better would have been simply, Will Steam on Gnu/Linux affect software freedom?
My guess is that headline writers are adapting to Ian Betteridge's observation by phrasing the headline other than as a yes-or-no question.
At the risk of falling in the excessive generalisation type of fallacy, think of it this way:
In most countries you are prohibited to sell yourself into slavery, even if you could this way offer for example a "good future" to your children. ...
The reason the law suppress this "freedom" is linked to the frictions in the "free market", basically if enough people would see this as a solution, they would compete for jobs & salaries with people who care about their freedom, and thus restrict the freedom of people who are not "volunteering" to become slaves.
In the case of Software, take for instance the case of DVD reading, if you start to support the closed DVD reading solutions you discourage both the development of free solutions and the release of non DRM'd content.
You could see this as a "non issue", the DVD reading solutions are quite cheap, and anybody who balk at this is more interested in saving pennies than saving freedom...
But since the "closed" solutions has to pay patent royalties, etc... it is definitivelly in the "commercial proprietary market", and therefore will look at the bottom line of each business decision, wich means: a Ubuntu/Debian x86 version, maybe a RH version, but certainly not a MIPS or ARM version.
And thus "non free solutions" pushed freedom out
Steam will do much for software freedom, maybe enough to undo all the harm cause by gaming on Wine. Proprietary Internet marketplace will always be proprietary and large choice of popular games on Linux will spread the use of free software. Also it will bring native ports, something Wine never did (eg; native port that link with native libwine was never use with any success).
In terms of software freedom, Steam won't affect much itself. The client is proprietary and as far as I know, every single game featured on Steam is proprietary (although stuff like the iD games can be run using replacement open source engines), but basically it's all one big closed-source pot. It will bring more attention to Linux and maybe some more commercial games, but that's about all.
Now, the only problem I can see is that bringing Steam into Linux will mean another selection of users will becomes used to the idea of DRM (Steam) and having games tied to a single point of failure (Steam), whereas before they were used to having installers that you could backup and install without requiring verification from a third-party. But anyone who's read my posts know I'm beating a dead horse here - I've said it all before about the dangers of keeping all your eggs in one basket, but from what I can tell, games are a special class of software in which this isn't really a concern. It's not crucial or necessary software, so a hypothetical scenario in which you can't play anything due to issues with Steam verification in a longer term scenario don't phase people much.
TL;DR : Steam on Linux will increase Linux's perception in the gaming world, increase its usage base for a bit (at least until some people go back to Windows because it runs some particular tool they didn't realize they needed before throwing away Windows after being swept away in the hype), but it won't do shit for software freedom.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
Your argument does not apply here because Valve is not limiting anyone's choices by offering games on Linux
In fact now you have MORE choice.
Great, now show me the F/OSS games with the same polish as commercial titles. Show me the F/OSS equivalent of Team Fortress 2, or Portal. Yeah, there are a few gems out there like Battle for Wesnoth, but other than that F/OSS gaming is dead.
I'm all for open source software and killing DRM. Heck, honestly I think we need to just abolish copyright all together. But I'm not going to cry over Steam coming to Linux because it means that Linux users will be able to actually have some games to play.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The choice is not "free games or paid games"
The choice is "paid games or no games"
Hard to see where "no games" is a benefit to anyone
RMS probably somewhat inadvertently made a very interesting remark.
He separates the Game Art from the Game Software...
And admits that Game Art could be "non free"...
One of my current activities is designing Gaming Maths, the way the maths are made has a strong impact on the enjoyment (or lack of) any game.
I would argue that the "artistic" as opposed to "software" component is just as great as the artistic component of the graphics.
I also think that there is a fundamental difference in Gaming apps versus Infrastructure or Activity Apps.
If I provide a text processing system or an OS or an Identity management app, all user data trapped into these applications are naturally "content" owned by the user, and it should be normal for the user to be able to share it just as s/he wants.
And it is immoral to force them to be promoter of their software if they want others to be able to read their presentation, or share files, etc...
But Gaming datas are for the most part relevant only in the game, and although some elements like "avatar design" might be usefully standardized, most parts should not been seen or manipulated outside of the game, because it would destroy the interest and artistic integrity of the game.
Having the "freedom" of adding 10000000 flogotz to my flogotz count is meaning less, and if I really want I could just lie about having found the amulet of yendor...
Reading the source code of a game is interesting, but I do believe that the social contract between a game designer and a tool designer is very different, and not just for the game graphics.
Therefore I think RMS can be assurer that at the end Valve opening to Gnu/Linux is not just neutral but a real gain.
And I think that instead avoiding to speak about it, it would be better to explain that:
There are interesting free games that you can use to play and to learn "how it is done"
There are interesting tools like Ogre3D to help you write games.
And there are non free games, it is somewhat frustrating because it might need something you do not have (if you processor is a MIPS it will probably not run), but it is very different from a non free Tool, and you are welcome to it.
And hopefully game designer will work with the various communities to make sure that the coverage is as global as possible, and not just as "economically optimal"....
since going to the bathroom is only helping the polluters you should stop going to the bathroom
how can you make the connection that Steam's use of DRM is equivalent to the MPAAs?
Honestly I don't think without proprietary driver support I would have switched to Linux eight years ago.
Perhaps RMS would be happy to define "successful" free software as an extremely obscure OS used by very few, like Ham-radio-morse-code-hobby few, or less. Meanwhile we have millions who know about Linux exactly because its version of Free doesn't mean shut-down-to-non-free. On that evidence, I think the "goal of freedom" has spread much farther already than it would have.
RMS is an important shit-disturber, but I think he needs to review the years and admit what has gotten traction and what has not. It'll help him make a much more effective message.
If a developer chooses to restrict the choices of his/her users, the user is more than welcome to find another solution to his/her problem, leaving the user in the exact same position as if the software was never developed. The users have had nothing taken from them. (We'll leave software patents out of it, which are separate from copyright; you'll get no argument from me that software patents are a good idea. Most developers of proprietary software hate them just as much as RMS.)
I have no issues whatsoever with the GPL itself. I have no issues with the obligations it puts on distributors and re developers of the software. I DO have issues with the idea that developers should feel morally obligated to use it, or something like it. The developers should be free to choose whatever license he/she wishes, as long as the terms are disclosed to the user prior to purchase.
Maybe you'd have a point if unlocked phones were unavailable.
In areas where only CDMA2000 carriers have any sort of reception, unlocked phones are unavailable.
BMWs cost more than Fiats.
I can accept BMW charging extra because a BMW vehicle includes physical things that cost extra to make. Flipping a privilege bit, on the other hand, doesn't cost the carrier extra.
Firstly, the article was written by Richard Stallman himself (you know, the founder of the FSF, and the architect of much of GNU); I would think he would know what its goals are.
Linus's goal is to provide a free core system. The goal of the FSF is to convince the world that proprietary software is bad and should not exist. ("GNU" is a system, and therefore cannot have goals in and of itself.) Please refer to such fine articles like "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html ) or Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html )
Frankly, I'm surprised that there was some non-trivial number of Slashdot mods equally ignorant of who RMS is and the goals of the FSF.
Well, I think that the Artistic value/characteristic and the fact that the user contributed datas are for the most part really only relevant within the game makes it a "special case"...
But Valve games will be compatible with Linux but probably not with all distributions, and certainly not with all CPU/GPU variations.
Moreover it will not be possible for a third party to adapt the games to an XYZ machines.
And it will leverage the current non free market share it enjoys to eclipse free alternatives.
So It will probably be "better" but you should not confuse the short term illusion of "more choices" with the long term trend it might drive (or not).
So in many cases "non free" is better than "not at all" but it always comes with it's load of issues and unexpected consequences...
"it always comes with it's load of issues and unexpected consequences..."
Here is an implication that someone somewhere maybe should take some sort of action to prevent this! What would that action be?
Water falls due to gravity, which comes with its load of issues and unexpected consequences. If there is nothing to be done about it, what is the point in worrying about it?
That's a pretty naive statement. Your complaint should be against intrusive DRM, abuse of legal system, persecution of randomly selected people to make an example. None of which have jack shit to do with Steam which has a DRM so transparent as to be unnoticeable MOST of the time, and is developed by a company that has never been accused of the other things I mentioned. If all DRM were like Steam and all media companies like Valve, most people would have damn little to complain about. It must be sad to walk around thinking that even the guys that try to do things the right way are just as bad as the bastards. You're in for a lifetime of disappointment, stay away from computers and try knitting.
An OS won't teach anyone about anything..
Windows taught people to be good slaves.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
windows taught us to expect better
I've worked for both TI and the games industry all my professional life. With very limited exceptions I'd say Free Software and video games are not really compatible with each other. In fact, most of the time game companies are allergic to openness out of necessity.
The video game industry is tough and fierce. Much of the competitive advantages of any large studio come directly from the propietary technology they develop for their own games or the engines they license to other studios. Unreal Engine is a very good example of this.
Game companies, from the biggest manufacturer to the smallest studio, are plagued with trade secrets, patents, copyrighted code and tools that can't just be combined easily with their open counterparts. I don't see Valve's culture 'infiltrated' anytime soon because of this.
I think it's great for Linux users to be able to play games without having to boot Windows. But that comes with a compromise: not many advanced users install Ubuntu for their primary computer and I really doubt the software components and drivers needed to run Steam will be well supported in any other distro. Fedora, RHEL and Debian, for instance, have a policy of not including proprietary drivers or patent-encumbered software in the installation disc/image. It may be harder for the users of those distros to make it work.
In conclusion, it's a big win for the Linux user community but not so for the Free Software community.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
It's strange that free software, which is supposed to have all these advantages over proprietary, is so threatened by something as simple as the availability of some games on Linux.
Steam will be in some repos and not in others, valve will make a double click installer, and the only people who will care will be "freedom zealots" and a few people who chose the wrong distro and have to google how to install steam.
Let me spell out the difference between reimplementing UNIX as GNU and cloning a game more explicitly.
First, POSIX is a published specification. To an extent (though obviously not to the extent that you appear to desire), one can determine what the behavior of each API call is by reading the specification, and the developer of an implementation of POSIX can test existing freely-licensed applications against the implementation. A game, on the other hand, needs its rules reverse-engineered through play because the manual is by no means complete in describing the game's operation. For example, a video game manual doesn't say how fast a player character is allowed to run or how high he can jump.
Second, people are encouraged to reimplement the POSIX APIs. Games not so much, as we see with lawsuits against the author of another game product implementing the same rules.
...does even playing a game have to be a world shaking ideological decision?
Cripes, I'd sell the whole lot of you out to invading aliens in a heartbeat.
what it means for the fsf and the somewhat wacky ideas of Richard stalman.
But i do know that for steam to work on linux without the use of wine and it's window's api emulations Kernel modules will be required to allow the input and graphics snooping that it's anti-cheat system uses.
It might also need a kernel module to have it's own monitored network interface for the same reason.
unless they want to make a desura clone.
http://www.desura.com/
There's open, and there's free. The two are not necessarily the same thing, but many people confuse the two.
A lot of engines have been made "open", with sources that can be made available. In some case they're even free for various types of use, though not for commercial distribution.
I think that the "licensing model works well in this case. Use our engine or even extend it. Play with it for free. Profit from it and share a cut.
As for Fedora, RHEL, and Debian. Yes, they don't "include" proprietary stuff. But it's still not hard to find a .DEB or .RPM file, and in the modern 'nix package managers those are pretty easy to deal with.
By "proprietary software", I was referring to software the user is not authorized to redistribute without payment to the original developer.
RMS is not happy for users to merely receive the source and be allowed to modify it (this is actually a pretty common way for commercial packages to be distributed, such as the original UNIX); his explicit goal is for the user to be able to, in turn, redistribute the software without further monetary payment to the original author. This is a significant distinction.
And since the GNU license allows any purchaser of the software to redistribute the source (and/or compiled binaries) at will, supporting yourself by "selling" the software you've developed isn't a real lucrative business model. RMS supported himself as an employee of the MIT AI lab prior to running the FSF; the emacs tapes were a sideline. There is money in support, but not as much as RMS thinks there is.
I don't see how you, user, can claim any sort of moral authority to do whatever you like with my hard-earned time and effort. (Assuming, of course, my time and effort isn't based on Free software.) You want to write your own software and give it away for free to all and sundry, be my guest. But do not presume that I am under an obligation of any sort to give my product away. If that's a problem for you, you are certainly Free to not use anything I (or other developer of non-Free software) have created.
You can not trust proprietary software all you like and refuse to use it; that's fine by me. Nobody's forcing software on you. Now certainly interop and standards are a big deal, but if a standard requires interop with non-Free products... well, develop your own standard. Linus wanted a UNIX kernel that was Free, so instead of whining about how mean AT&T was, he wrote one.
There are indeed many pragmatic reasons to use the GPL, and as I stated earlier, I have absolutely no issues with it. None. I can see why a developer would choose it, and I think that it's a great tool. I applaud the efforts of those who want to make sure there are viable Linux distributions free of proprietary encumbrances.
Linux "stands for" a Free OS. Nothing more. I don't recall Linus ever stating he didn't want proprietary software to run on top of it.
Only the choice increasingly, for the list of things that end users expect computers to do in 2012, isn't just about games.
The choice is not "free software or paid software"
The choice is "paid software or no software"
Linux is a reasonable OS (though the GNOME and KDE foibles in recent years have put a very large dent in its reasonableness), but the fact is that for an end user most of the things that one might want to do with a computer can't be done on Linux without much more expense (assuming that labor time has value and that this is equivalent to expense).
Where is the Creative Suite equivalent for the college arts students?
Where is the Garage Sale equivalent for online sellers?
Where is the DevonThink equivalent for information library managers?
Where is the Scrivener equivalent for writers?
Nowhere. And don't give me GIMP, Firefox, PostgreSQL, and OpenOffice as "replacements." Ask the college arts students, online sellers, information library managers, and writers whether they're equivalent. They're not and the claims that they are exemplify the disconnect between open source developers and end users that has existed since the beginning.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
is "substantive freedom," i.e. freedom that actually makes you, the individual, feel more free in your life, given your preferences.
The lack of substantive freedom, which is commonly sacrificed for a kind of de novo freedom, is a thread that runs through all of society right now. With free software you're free to do a lot of things in theory, but in practice (i.e. in your daily life) your range of actual choices/opportunities is actually much smaller with free software than with "un-free" software.
The same thing is happening in our political and economic life. So many are desperate to protect freedoms they never plan to use or will never practically have the opportunity to use, and are willing, in order to protect them, to sacrifice the practical everyday choices and opportunities that they would gain with (say) more regulation, changes in the tax code, increases in public health or safety, etc.
Idealism can be the greatest tyrant of them all when it causes individuals to limit their choices to almost nil in order to preserve theoretical freedoms that they will likely (statistics tell us) never be in a position to use.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
If Valve can fix the mess that is audio on linux and make that available to all distros then that in itself would make Steam worthwhile.
1.Will Steam on Linux have a negative impact on your abillity to do whatever you want with the other binaries on your system? Will the DRM (or anti-cheat system) require specific binaries to be validated somehow? (e.g. to prevent attaching gdb to Steam DRM protected binaries or modifying GPU, keyboard and mouse drivers to build an aimbot that feeds events to the game in a way that is indistinguishable from real inputs)
and 2.Will Steam on Linux result in the creation of new devices that restrict user freedom (rumors say that the Linux work is a precursor to a Valve gaming console running Linux. Whether that console would contain restrictions is unknown)
To my mind as a Gentoo user (and someone who is squarely in the Open Source camp) it is acceptable to use proprietary software on a free software OS if no free alternative exists (and in the case of the Valve games, no free alternative is ever going to exist) and where the other option is to use the proprietary software on as proprietary OS. What I dont support is anything that seeks to take away my rights to use the free software I run as I see fit (which is why I have a standing boycott of companies like HTC that continue to violate the GPL by not releasing kernel source for their devices alongside the release of the devices and why I refuse to own any handset that will not allow me to replace the Kernel and root operating system should I choose to do so)
No offense, but I think you are suffering from being used to one thing and missing it when you don't have it. I've worked 20 years as a programmer, about half in a Windows environment and half in an embedded/Unix environment. When programming in an embedded or Unix environment we always used the GNU tool chain because it's what all of the programmers preferred.
Anyway, I vastly prefer the available free software tools over any proprietary platform. For example, for source management, nothing beats Git (well, I can understand why some people prefer Mercurial, but that's free software too). I've used Perforce, Clear Case, and (god help me) Source Safe. They slow me down dramatically. For build management, a lot of Windows programmers use the tools built in to Visual Studio, but this makes continuous integration virtually impossible. I want a continuous build running. I want to know if a check in broke the build immediately, not a day later. All of the best continuous build tools are free software (and many of them have Visual Studio plugins in case you just can't wean yourself from it). Are there any TDD frameworks that aren't free software in existance??? I don't know of any. For build tools, if I'm writing C++ or C the Auto tools are dramatically better than anything I've ever seen on Windows (though I admit they are *very* cryptic and require time to learn). For other languages, I just tend to use whatever the language provides -- Ant for Java, Rake for Ruby, whatever. There are some IDE tools, but they only really work in Mickey Mouse situations, not in large software projects.
There are a couple of places where I'll give the nod to some of the proprietary software tools. Personally, I like vi (and even Emacs -- I'm bilingual) along with exuberant ctags. I'm dramatically more productive with that than with any IDE I've tried (and I probably have tried them all). The one place where Visual Studio excels is in refactoring tools. But in the end, not having them doesn't slow me down enough to use VS. If you are used to VS, I can see why you wouldn't want to learn anything else. Editors are really personal. It's a pity that people choose to learn tools that are only available on a single platform, but there you go...
For writing a manual.... Seriously, Word???? That's just nuts. You can't write a decent manual in Word because you just don't have the typesetting features. I suppose if it's not a professional manual (which is why a programmer is writing it)... I wouldn't use Open Office either. If I had to write a manual, it would certainly be LaTeX, which would give me good output and would be much easier to write to boot. You do have to learn, it though. Having said that, there are no particularly good typesetting packages available in free software that a documentation expert would likely want to use. But Word also fits that description.
As for having to use the command line... You *are* a programmer aren't you? Seriously, scripting is your friend. You save soooo much time. I think you are used to doing things one way and even though the new way is dramatically better, you aren't used to it. There's a reason why people used to working on Unix like systems haven't embraced the point and click programming IDE. Command line interfaces and specially built tools that do their task exceptionally well are much, much, better.
It's a pity, because I've met many programmers like you when I worked in Windows-only shops. It doesn't take that much time to show the benefit of the tools available in a free software environment. But if you don't know, then you don't know.
Good going on not reading the article properly.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I have seen a lot of shit commercial titles and equally shit open source ones.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Actually this is a positive step towards getting more professional games onto the linux through steam for now and hopefully in the future game installers will be wrapped around by a packaging manager that will work for all linux distros. Freedom is about choices, options, not about forcing only open source software onto the linux. Linux for the Desktop runs just fine and even better than windows 7 in some areas. I have a phenom ii x6 system and windows 7 freezes when watching flash in firefox or chrome for 1 minute a few times and it goes away if i use anything than the web, i tested all my hardware and it all just fine good shape. Firefox linux is a lot faster than the windows version. But with kubuntu 12.04 it just runs flawlessly on the same hardware on the second partition, no freezes or issues. I remember I had same issue with windows server 2003 on a different amd machine few years ago. It's probably motherboard driver(using windows 7 standard) issue which I can't do anything about since the motherboard manufacturer and amd does not have the northbridge chipset drivers. When my windows 7 is flaking out I just switch over to linux. Right now I'm relying on visual basic 6, visual studio 2010, photoshop, maya, and netflix and not so much for pc games since i'm using emulators(ps2, nes, snes, genesis, gamecube/wii, mame). I will eventually move to linux as primary OS and use win7 in virtual box. Today's linux distros are more reliable and stable than windows xp sp3 and even windows 7 in some instances.
Halp, I can't run Second life (open source application) on my Linux system on a m68k processor. Wat do?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
All software that is intended as a permanent architecture should be open source. That is- if you're writing something that isn't just going to be abandoned at a specific point, it should probably be open source, because you have no idea how people in the future will use it. Things like operating systems, drivers, utilities like video players, bittorrent clients, network scanners, etc. But for something like a game, where it really only has one purpose, the only benefit of making it open source is to allow for mods, and most games can do that without releasing the source of their binaries, because there is some internal scripting language. Either way- at one point or another in the future, the game will shut down- and no one will be playing it anymore, so I don't think it makes a big difference if its open soruce or not. But regardless- valve owns the code, and its up to them whether they want it to be open source or not. This doesn't change whether its on windows, linux, or mac. You can't ban closed source programs from an OS, it just doesn't work and isn't realistic to expect all companies to be down with releasing all of their code when there are a lot of companies out there who sell primarily CODE. This situation is analogous to a three ring binder company that expressly forbids manufacturers from putting whole printed books, instead of individual pages, inside their binder. Good luck with that, and why again do you care?
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That's right, nowhere. :)
All we have are multiplayer shooters (no single player, because designing a proper single player experience is hard and doesn't involve programming much), and a few clones of programming heavy genres (wesnoth is heavily inspired by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlords_(game_series) ).
To produce a finished game you need more than a group of bored programmers working in their spare time. Although that sufficed to take over the internet - look at apache
So let's all bid a warm welcome to our new Steam overlords. Especially since we will probably get the linux versions of games we already own for free - as in beer.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Because it's linux, it doesn't mean everything should be free. And if you think it should then you're just a cheap-ass lamer. It costs a lot of time to create games and content and also a lot of money, so why should it be free? You don't go to work for free, now do ya?
The presence of Steam on Linux offers freedom of choice, which is surely the most important freedom of all. The availability of more software does nothing to restrict the software that's already available. Did people decry DeCSS as bringing DRMed material to Linux? Of course not -- it opened choices.
And besides, increased trade will lead to a healthier ecosystem -- it's in Valve's interests that hardware manufacturers provide better Linux support, something which the average Linux user will definitely benefit from.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
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There's a reason why people used to working on Unix like systems haven't embraced the point and click programming IDE. Command line interfaces and specially built tools that do their task exceptionally well are much, much, better.
IDEs are fantastic at various tasks such as auto-completion, refactoring, click-through navigation..
I would miss those working without an IDE, and command line tools just aren't going to provide that same ease of use and boost to productivity.
Pretty much everything else though, I agree with you completely. Learn to program on the command line, get good at it, automate the hell out of everything (including your check-in and test process). But then boot up the IDE because it will help you work faster.
It will die, after M$ brings in their app store/Package manager, no game development company will care about steam any longer.
So after windows' package manager starts working, steam will die.
Steam was just a third party package manager for games anyway.
It's totally not a coincidence that GPLd apps like Busybox and Wordpress and Drupal sue their end-devs just for making non-GPL'd themes and plugins.
That's just unbelievable. And just like the MPAA.
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Most software is akin to industrial machinery, to make your universal machine (a computer) work like a particular machine.
Games, however, are much closer to culture - like books or novels. Raise your hand if you put a priority on making sure your cultural consumption meets the free cultural works definition. Anyone? ...
So if you want most games to be free software, you have to shift that cultural attitude. Good luck! Let me know how that works out!
http://rocknerd.co.uk
But you probably have seen much more kickass commercial titles than open source ones?
It's still scary how some years ago Slashdot was all about opposing DRM, but when you have it in a nice enough package, all the concerns suddenly go out of window. (That said, still I think there are worse things in world than Steam.)
I thought linking issues were resolved with the ABIs aren't copyrightable decision. I could be wrong of course.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
"How Will Steam on GNU/Linux Affect Software Freedom?"
It won't. You'll still be free to buy or not buy steam games for Linux.
Just because some people charge money for closed source software that runs on a free operating system, that does not mean you are forced to use that software. It is only when you are forced to used closed software is your freedom impacted.
For years now I've been thinking that the FOSS *nix Community needs to move closer to the vertical models poping up left, right and center with Apple, Google, Amazon and others.
Think about it:
With apt we have a software management tool that technically is/was at least 10 years ahead of the rest. What the FOSS community needs to add now is the ability to easyly transfer money back to the developers through basically the same channels.
Steams strength isn't wether it's FOSS or not and frankly, I don't think anybody will really care. Steams advantage, as with Apple Appstore, Amazon and Google Play is the ability for developers to easyly get some cash for their work.
Right now, within the FOSS community, beyond the odd Paypal Donation Button this isn't possible. This has to change. We need a community driven solution to donating or buying or paying for certain pieces of software or specific features and bugfixes.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Sure, but there are a lot of great commercial titles with absolutely no F/OSS equivalent that comes close.
The fact that there are bad games on both sides doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of great commercial titles and only a handful of decent F/OSS ones. Really, aside from: SuperTux, Battle for Wesnoth, FreeCiv/FreeCol, and Open Arena there aren't a lot of other good open source titles. On the other hand, off the top of my head some great commercial games for the PC include: Portal, Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Skyrim, Fable, etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Yes, however I've also seen more crap commercial titles than open source ones too. I'm not convinced from a percentage ratio of crap verses good that they are significantly different. I suspect that there are less than 1% of both commercial and opensource games qualify as 'kick ass'.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
If somebody's own code needs to link against a proprietary library they've licensed, for instance, then they can't GPL their own code. Or, in a company, a developer might want to use some GPL code, but the company does not want to make the their code GPL too. In both cases, BSD license would allow the open source code to be used, and probably LGPL would allow it too, but not full GPL. Wether this is good or bad, is subjective.
In areas where only CDMA2000 carriers have any sort of reception
Would "so don't use a CDMA2000 carrier" be too flippant of a reply?
Yes. As I understand it, there are still parts of the United States not covered by UMTS. Remember Verizon's "There's a map for that" commercial? In such places, not using a CDMA2000 carrier in some parts of the United States means not having decent mobile data at all.
Seriously, if no one bought their service how in the world would they survive?
By selling service to the majority of people, who happen not to care about freedom. That's how video game console makers have survived since 1985.
Right now, Linux is still an "outsider", without much weight in the industry... It's mostly present in a few niches : ...
- web hosting (and sometimes, web development, when Flash and Photoshop are not needed)
- Academic (mostly universities)
- Fanatics
- some places where a centra IT has decided to use it (Munich, French police,...)
The concerns about the UEFI and microsoft key are present because Linux is NOT mainstream enough to make computer vendor worry about Linux becoming unusable on their computers.
By embracing Linux, Steam may open linux to more people. Don't forget that older (DOS) games on steam run through a modified version of Dosbox (which is available on both Linux and Windows), that some game are already OpenGL/X11 ready because a MAC version does exist,...
If Steam move make more people use Linux, it also mean that more people will be using LibreOffice (or OpenOffice) instead of Microsoft Office. It also mean that more people will have a try at The Gimp, Blender, Audacity, Ardour, Pidgin, gcc,...
And don't get it wrong, the people the more likely to make the switch to Linux remain the more computer litterate... People who make be willing to have a look at the "official" web-site of these linux programs that they are using... and discover that the source are available, that contributions are (mostly) welcome,...
You can't force freedom through the troat of someone... the only thing that you may do is show that freedom exists and wait until they long for it enough to go further.
And I don't think that all software has to be free. I think that core software has to. This include OS, wordprocessing (spreadsheet,...), image edition/creation, music creation/listening/... These are the keys to computer world. Games are only content.
Do you mean "unlocked" as in "Able to switch carrier" or "Able to change software"?
Historically, these two unlocks (called "unlock" and "jailbreak" respectively in the iOS hacking community) have been tied together. When most smartphones ran Java ME, Nokia phones purchased directly from Nokia had a lot more privileges available to homemade MIDlets than Nokia phones purchased from a carrier. And later on, Android phones purchased from AT&T had the "Unknown sources" checkbox hidden from the user until AT&T gave in to overwhelming demand for the Amazon Appstore and reenabled the checkbox.
A truly multifunctional device (of course, game consoles are just plain computer and one could do many things with them, but people tend to see the game console as a different species, only good for gaming)
PS3 is marketed as "it only does everything", and it was still marketed as that even after Sony had taken away Other OS. So in light of such marketing, why do people still "see the game console as a different species"?
Let's say there's a piece of GPL code you'd want to use, instead of rolling your own. Now only way to use that piece is to make your entire software GPL
That is rubbish. Provided you don't distribute it outside your company then you don't have to make your own software GPL.
Of course if you do want to distribute it in a proprietary sense so you can make profit out of other peoples work then you can't.
You're right. I didn't read the article properly, with the approved Stallman interpretation (licensed under the GPL v3+).
But the article doesn't really say much at all. I was referring to the various comments, hand wringing, navel gazing and decrying done by various adherents.
...but there comes a time when you actually need the best possible tools to accomplish a goal. In my case I like making music. I left the proprietary music making software world full time in 2006 when GNU/Linux had finally caught up to where things were back then. I dumped Cakewalk Pro Audio, Adobe Audition, Cubase VST 24 Studio for Ardour, Rosegarden, Hydrogen, Alsa Modular Synth, LinuxSampler, and QSynth. In general, I was able to do all of the same stuff without much extra effort. In general it's all about templates anyway, so you set up your templates for how you work in these new apps and it really isn't much different. But then I decided late last year to look at what was happening on Mac and Windows and just in the short five/six years I've been away, things have changed drastically. There are much better products and many developers have dropped their prices. It's much easier to get music made with other software and I don't see the Linux apps catching up quite yet. In fact I'm seeing more stagnation thanks to Ubuntu taking over on most development. They are ignoring the applications I used or even dropping them from the repositories.
Yes I can still move to a different distro and build things from source, but that takes away from the time I have to actually make music. So I'm not sure what to do now. The lure of really easy, appealing and efficient tools (that don't all work in WINE and don't play nice with the DSSI plugins like vestige and festige) is pretty strong. And the prices aren't as bad anymore. So as much I as I really want to support freedom, I don't want to have to wait another five to ten years to be able to do what others are doing now on proprietary platforms. Therein lies the rub. Steam releasing on GNU/Linux will provide people with easy access to what they want with no waiting. That's a good thing from the perspective of a PC actually serving a purpose. It's a bad thing in terms of supporting freedom. I don't know where you go with that.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
there's plenty of pay to play software in the ubuntu software center (well, not only games ofcourse) already, just as there is quite the amount of free to play games available on steam (something you don't get on xbla, i can't speak for psn). You can hardly deny someone the right to ask money for their stuff, it's up to them to make it better so someone wants to pay for it imo
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Hmm, this leads me to wonder, what happens when GPL software is used in a company's internal systems and installed into company PCs, and then there's a spin-off or other splitting. Now the parent company needs to essentially distribute the software to the spin-off, and can do so only under the GPL, essentially giving the spin-off, which is now a separate legal entity, all the rights granted by GPL... Or they can not distribute the software to the spin-off, which might be problematic if it's a mission-critical application. Of course this is no problem as long as same people decide what spin-off does with the GPL-licensed software it received from parent company, but generally spin-offs might get sold, and new owners might decide to take advantage of the now-GPL internal software of the original company.
Conclusion: if it's a mission-critical (or just important) application for company internal use, which you're not willing to make public later on, or which uses other components which have GPL-incompatible license, do not use GPLed software components in it. What starts as internal use, allowed by GPL, may turn into distribution.
A users ability to run a piece of software can't be taken if he/she never had it to begin with.
If no similar product exists and the user doesn't want to accept my terms? Tough $hit.
My, my, how short memories are. Do you not remember the YEARS IBM fought the SCO litigation, which was about how evil IBM was for contributing to Linux? (And the suit is still ongoing, but it's now a stupid contract dispute, as Novell pre-empted the original claims due to SCOs contract language.)
And IBM has consistently pledged not to use it's patent portfolio against Linux and all of their contributions have been under the GPL, just like the rest of the kernel.
Who's asking you to abridge your freedom of thought and expression? All I'm saying is that if you want a copy of my work (and/or want to distribute it to others) you are going to have to pay me for it.
You Americans idolize stupidity so much, you buy your mobile phones from cellular phone service providers and consider it normal.
That's because a contract smartphone costs $350 less than a no-contract smartphone, and until very recently, the service for a no-contract smartphone wasn't $350 cheaper to make up for it. This sort of freedom isn't worth $350 to any phone customer other than a hardcore geek, and hardcore geeks are an edge case.