SteamOS Didn't Use Ubuntu Over Legal Issues

[phoronix]

Phoronix: SteamOS Didn't Use Ubuntu Over Legal Issues

Last month when SteamOS was publicly made available in beta form there were many surprised that Valve based their Linux distribution off Debian rather than Ubuntu, which they had been heavily promoting up to this point for Linux gaming. There was some speculation why Valve went with Debian, but Gabe Newell has now confirmed the reasoning for not basing their operating system off Ubuntu...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTU2Mjc

[moilami]

Sucks to be Ubuntu.

[amorpisseur]

Good ridance

[hiryu]

Hmmm... Could this be over the GPLv3? Some ubuntu components use the GPLv3 I believe (besides Mir I mean). I reserve the right to be completely wrong about this.

[carewolf]

Hmmm... Could this be over the GPLv3? Some ubuntu components use the GPLv3 I believe (besides Mir I mean). I reserve the right to be completely wrong about this.

So does Debian. So very much doubt it.

I would have thought technical issues would be the cause, but technical issues could have been why developers below stopped pushing for Ubuntu, leaving management time to figure out an idea "completely on their own without the stupid knowledge from their underlings". So yeah, "legal issues". there are always lots of those, likely their fork wouldn't be allowed to be called ubuntu, or allowed to advertise it as ubuntu compatible, leaving the benefit of following the brandname moot.

[Jebril]

Mark Shuttlworth must be some kind of idiot, and Ubuntu is going to die with his new direction, I'm sure just 4 years ago before all this nonsense with Unity they would've gladly let them use Ubuntu for Steam OS, now they want to be paid?

"Pay us to double our userbase and create games for it" It's not like Valve's not giving you any benefit, in fact what they're going to give you is more beneficial than money, a FUCKING SIGNIFICANT USERBASE. Not just some 1% bullshit.

[Kano]

I see no problem for Valve to use Debian as base, but they could have a more complete repository. You can not build packages when they only keep the installed packages and remove the rest. The source is complete however but it could be done better.

[entropy]

Not sure if this is misleading.

While there might be a "legal issue", the article actually speaks about an
unclear legal situation concerning some additional components.

So this might be -again- one of those constellations where it's just not perfectly
clear what's allowed and what's not. Think of proprietary driver modules.

[interested]

Hmmm... Could this be over the GPLv3? Some ubuntu components use the GPLv3 I believe (besides Mir I mean). I reserve the right to be completely wrong about this.

Unlikely. The legal problems are most likely to be Canonicals "Contributor License Agreement" (CLA)

http://www.canonical.com/contributors

As I understand it, you sign away some of you rights when agreeing with this CLA. Especially section 2.3 in the "enteties" CLA, that basically allows Canonical to re-license everything under a closed source commercial licence if they wish to.

And you can't really contribute to Canonical/Ubuntu without signing such a CLA.

[mrugiero]

For the non-german speakers, does the linked article explain which kind of legal issues there are?