Just as an extra comment: if they REALLY love open source, and it is only, as you said, because Steam wouldn't succeed being open source that it is closed, why they don't open the Gold Source engine? It is not actively being sold (as it is obsolete), the source code is obviously not lost, as they ported it to Linux just months ago, and is unrelated to Steam (as the service that gets them most of the money). They would be making a nice gift to free and open source software, and it doesn't represent any loss to them.
Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Valve Joins The Linux Foundation
Collapse
X
-
Originally posted by GreatEmerald View PostAnd no again, games on Steam use their own DRM regardless of the layer added by Steam. Which means you get double DRM. That's not helping anyone in the slightest. And some publishers would publish their titles happily on Steam if there was no DRM just the same (if they are DRM-free, like everyone who publishes on GOG, or use their own DRM, in which case they don't need Steam's).
Originally posted by mrugiero View Postwhy they don't open the Gold Source engine? It is not actively being sold (as it is obsolete), the source code is obviously not lost, as they ported it to Linux just months ago
//EDIT: Also AFAIR the GoldSrc engine uses 3rd party codes, making it hard for Valve to change the license.
Comment
-
Originally posted by TAXI View PostThen these publishers are stupid as the Steam DRM is optional for them. Actually there are DRM free games on Steam (you can copy them out of the steam folder and they will still run without steam, even on another computer).
Comment
-
Originally posted by TAXI View PostPorting it when it's no longer being sold sounds weird, but surely you know better than Valve.
//EDIT: Also AFAIR the GoldSrc engine uses 3rd party codes, making it hard for Valve to change the license.
Comment
-
Originally posted by mrugiero View PostJust as an extra comment: if they REALLY love open source, and it is only, as you said, because Steam wouldn't succeed being open source that it is closed, why they don't open the Gold Source engine? It is not actively being sold (as it is obsolete), the source code is obviously not lost, as they ported it to Linux just months ago, and is unrelated to Steam (as the service that gets them most of the money). They would be making a nice gift to free and open source software, and it doesn't represent any loss to them.
There's not much reason to open source the GoldSrc engine when better open source engines already exists. It's just a custom old quake engine. You may not know very much about Valve, but they are very particular about the quality of anything they release. If they decided to open source the old engine it would mean they would be spending a lot of time with documentation and developing better tools for it.
Valve's not a big public company like EA or Ubisoft. They are privately owned, they do not have a heirarchy structure in the company so there are no job positions (it's sort of like communism, everyone is their own boss and they collectively work together on whatever they want to work on), and hire the best of the best programmers and game designers. Therefore, you can't really treat Valve as a normal company, since it's largely just a group of the most elite developers in the game industry, as well as fresh developers they have personally selected out of Digipen if they see a student with ideas they like (Such is how Portal came about), and highly successful Half-Life 2 modders.
Asking them to open source something is really silly. Instead, what they should be doing is what they are already doing: making Linux a better place for other game developers and egging on unsupportive hardware manufacturers to start supporting Linux. Let Valve do what they do best, and let the open source community do what they do best. Once Valve has successfully completed getting everyone on board and completing their existing open source projects, finish coding the new Source 2 engine, release SteamOS, and release two new games they've been working on for ages, maybe they'll have time to consider writing some open source programs for you.Last edited by mmstick; 06 December 2013, 04:48 PM.
Comment
-
Originally posted by bayan.r View PostTo the Stallman parrots:
The free software debate is one to be had by software creators, not users. As far as users are concerned, the software's value is determined by how productive, or in the case of gaming, entertaining it is. Users don't really care about the licensing of the software or the availability of it's source, and should not have to. For most linux fans, the free as in freedom aspect of the system is not it's prime attraction, it is the flexibility of Linux distributions opposed to windows or mac, a feature that has nothing to do with software licensing.
The fact is most free software projects advertise the fact that they're free, losing the attention of users who neither know nor care what that means. Firefox didn't spread because it is free, it spread because it is a competitive product.
Advocacy to users does a lot more harm than good to the free software cause. Instead of being that friendly person who wants to save them from their proprietary jails, in their eyes you're that douchebag working his agenda into every conversation, because let's face it, free or not, regular users won't directly feel the effects of a world with free software. Unless you're dealing with code, software freedom is not a visible thing.
Steam on Linux makes Linux a more attractive means that it's a step in the direction of users thinking about it as a real alternative to windows, not just that thing their nerd friends use for some reason.
As long as free software remains inferior to proprietary software in the eyes of users, no amount of lobbying will convince them to use it, so stop treating freedom as a feature that should be present in all software users should look for. It is a fundamental property that all software should possess. We shouldn't be fighting to maximize free software users, we shoud be fighting for a world where I can use any piece of software and reasonably expect to be able to use, examine, modify and redistribute it without restriction, a world where it is a legitimate surprise if I can't. Developers, especially those building apps for the average joe, are the only ones that can make this happen and once they learn to advertise the quality of their product over licensing when going free will they realize how little the average joe cares, and how much better it is for them.
The value to users in a free software economy is that they are not forced into the role of consumers. If they're content with just passively consuming, that's one thing, but increasingly that's not the case - there's a sort of paradigm shift in the way we consume all media in general: user-created content, user participation, is an increasingly huge deal in many areas of business. That's exactly why social platforms like facebook have surged in popularity, why other sites are trying to parrot that model. Even Valve realizes this, if you listen to Gabe's speeches, he sees the culture of modding, hacking and all types of user participation, the blurring of the line between users and developers, as something crucial to PC gaming, and the main advantage of Linux.
Sure, you might assume that most people who have grew up in a windows environment don't want to participate in development, and you'd be correct. However in many cases this is simply because of the difference in the mindset of that platform, where the role of "user" is strictly defined and limited as a passive consumer. Some of these users might get more interested in participating in development after migrating to a more open platform. And not all ways of participation need to be about coding, there's other ways to participate besides contributing code.
Comment
-
Originally posted by mmstick View PostThe original Half Life and Counter-Strike are still actively sold. The engine may be obsolete, but it's still making money, Counter-Strike is still one of the most actively played games on Steam since 2001, Half Life games are still entertaining, the other day even a HL1 mod got placed into Steam. If you watch steam sales, the Half Life 1 anthology sells quite a bit.
There's not much reason to open source the GoldSrc engine when better open source engines already exists. It's just a custom old quake engine. You may not know very much about Valve, but they are very particular about the quality of anything they release. If they decided to open source the old engine it would mean they would be spending a lot of time with documentation and developing better tools for it.
Valve's not a big public company like EA or Ubisoft. They are privately owned, they do not have a heirarchy structure in the company so there are no job positions (it's sort of like communism, everyone is their own boss and they collectively work together on whatever they want to work on), and hire the best of the best programmers and game designers. Therefore, you can't really treat Valve as a normal company, since it's largely just a group of the most elite developers in the game industry, as well as fresh developers they have personally selected out of Digipen if they see a student with ideas they like (Such is how Portal came about), and highly successful Half-Life 2 modders.
Asking them to open source something is really silly. Instead, what they should be doing is what they are already doing: making Linux a better place for other game developers and egging on unsupportive hardware manufacturers to start supporting Linux. Let Valve do what they do best, and let the open source community do what they do best. Once Valve has successfully completed getting everyone on board and completing their existing open source projects, finish coding the new Source 2 engine, release SteamOS, and release two new games they've been working on for ages, maybe they'll have time to consider writing some open source programs for you.
Comment
-
Originally posted by dee. View PostThe problem with this is the artificial division of "users" and "developers". This assumes a consumerist, top-down model, with "consumers" on one side and "producers" on the other, with content flowing from one side to the other.
The value to users in a free software economy is that they are not forced into the role of consumers. If they're content with just passively consuming, that's one thing, but increasingly that's not the case - there's a sort of paradigm shift in the way we consume all media in general: user-created content, user participation, is an increasingly huge deal in many areas of business. That's exactly why social platforms like facebook have surged in popularity, why other sites are trying to parrot that model. Even Valve realizes this, if you listen to Gabe's speeches, he sees the culture of modding, hacking and all types of user participation, the blurring of the line between users and developers, as something crucial to PC gaming, and the main advantage of Linux.
Sure, you might assume that most people who have grew up in a windows environment don't want to participate in development, and you'd be correct. However in many cases this is simply because of the difference in the mindset of that platform, where the role of "user" is strictly defined and limited as a passive consumer. Some of these users might get more interested in participating in development after migrating to a more open platform. And not all ways of participation need to be about coding, there's other ways to participate besides contributing code.
Unfortunately in the corporate world, the initial reaction is to share nothing and that is what needs to change, the mindset that you have to hide your code so people won't steal it. When sharing code becomes the norm again, then the users will see the benefits, that's what I meant by it's invisibility to them right now.
Originally posted by mrugiero View PostPretty much wrong. Users don't care, and do not have to care, about source code licensing, as this is pretty much useless if you do not read it. But the binaries comes with a license, too, and they care and should care about the conditions to use it. It is not the same to have a software you can use any way you want than a software you can only use on a given platform (even if you could run it without problems in other platforms, for example, MacOS X should be able to run on any AMD64 hardware, but the license binds you to use an Apple computer). Some Linux users might want to use MacOS X, as it is a decent OS, but don't want the hardware lock it implies, for example.
For those reasons I think developers, especially proprietary vendors should be having this discussion. Users should not have to get involved simply because source code licensing does not matter to them.
Comment
Comment