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this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Linux Gaming
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I mean, I'm not naive to think valve does anything for anything other than money and self preservation. That doesn't mean I (and the overall linux community as a whole) don't greatly benefit from it. I want to incentivize their actions which benefit me. I love that I have been able to not boot into Windows for close to a decade because of proton, so I buy from them. I hate that GOG for all their drm free policy don't support linux, and that I have to jump through hoops to get their games working on linux (which is again made easier because of valve's proton), so I don't buy from them.
I agree GOG and Valve have different objectives. GOG's objective is to provide drm free games, where as Valve's objective is to make linux a viable gaming platform so they can stay independent of Microsoft. My objective aligns with Valve, so they get my money.
I love my Steam Deck and have recently made small steps in my journey away from Windows. I installed Pop OS on a laptop. Do you have any tips that might make that transition easier?
Thanks in advance. 👍
There's a key point in the article that emphasizes that valve are indeed "being nice": their policy is " upstream everything".
Yes the motives are still keeping a foot out in case Microsoft decides to screw them over in some way, but they could (as many companies do) keep the improvements all for themselves, buy developers and make a closed source version of any of the tech they have been funding, locking down steamOS to only allow steam games and so on.
They couldn’t legally create a closed source SteamOS, but they also aren’t required to “upstream everything”.
I’m not a legal expert of any kind, but AFAIU they are only legally required to send you the changes they made to the source code on request (with GPLv3).
Though I disagree that this is Valve being nice, IMO doing this makes sense for most companies working in this space, as their code being accepted upstream means they benefit from anything the community has built up around the project, and they don’t have to play catchup with upstream.
They could have gone BSD and then done whatever they wanted.
Complete nonsense, even publicly traded companies upstream their open source code because it makes business sense. Valve doesn't do anything to be nice and never has. They're creating their own market to sell to in case MS locks them out.
I mean, both could be true at the same time.
And I don't buy games out of the bottom of my heart to give those companies more money. So why should I care about their reasoning, as long as they aren't inherently unethical? In the end it's a win / win situation that we can both benefit from. I personally cannot compare Valve & Microsoft here, because Microsoft acts in a way that is ultimately not a win situation for me as a customer anymore. Google started similarly, but then went to shit in how they behaved, hence why I degoogled myself for at least the majority of their services, especially their search engine. If Valve continues to benefit me as a customer, then I as a customer will continue to benefit Valve. That's our contract, or mutual agreement.