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Valve Funds Glassy Mesa Development For Better Driver Performance

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  • #11
    Originally posted by ssokolow View Post
    If Valve products didn't violate two separate policies regarding software on my system, I'd buy the shit out of Valve games too.

    (I have a strict "No DRM, no piracy" policy (A.K.A. "must own what I pay for, must not implicitly endorse what I shun") and the Steam client runs up against the policy that the only non-games that are allowed to be closed source are the grandfathered-in BIOS, nVidia drivers, Flash, Skype, and Opera 12.x)
    And yet you guys fail to see where Steam isn't using a DRM scheme that violates a damn thing. Getting your games through steam is like buying direct download .flac files from bandcamp.

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    • #12
      I noticed that quite a percentage of my Linux games on Steam don't use DRM at all. Example: Kentucky Route Zero. The Steam version (in that regard) is the same version as the DRM-free Humble Widget/Store version. While no Steam running at all I can run the binary from the folder (.../SteamApps/common/Kentucky...) just perfeclty fine. There's a list somewhere about all games that do not use DRM (that is: you have to run an instance of Steam) at all. Wikipedia or somewhere.

      That should be fine for the folks who want to avoid any "DRM" at all. However Steam's DRM doesn't have to do anything with DRM as from mp3s, video steaming, Microsoft etc.

      What sucks about not owning the copy entirely is sometimes forced auto-updates ("update required"). Example from the Windows world: People who would love to play an older version of Half-Life 2, e.g. from the physical copy they bought. There are some reasons to want this, but legally it is impossible. Or sometimes games get new features or updates can break something. That's a point against Steam, I agree.

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      • #13
        You have a strict code of honour regarding software on your PC, yet you have some of the dirtiest piece of closed source buffoonary!

        And then not use Steam!?
        Hi

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        • #14
          Originally posted by _SXX_ View Post
          Why do you think so?
          Intel only was against using LLVM inside their own driver when these optimizations done before driver get the shader.
          It's more complicated than that. Depending on LLVM in any part of libGL means linking in libstdc++. Proprietary applications often ship a copy of this library. When libGL is loaded by the game with an old bundled version of libstdc++ already loaded, things blow up.

          See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78242 for instance.

          I'm not aware of solutions short of statically linking LLVM and libstdc++ into libGL and drivers that use LLVM, which is of course very distasteful and increases binary sizes significantly. It's an unfortunate situation.

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          • #15
            Originally posted by mattst88 View Post
            It's more complicated than that. Depending on LLVM in any part of libGL means linking in libstdc++. Proprietary applications often ship a copy of this library. When libGL is loaded by the game with an old bundled version of libstdc++ already loaded, things blow up.
            Yeah I seen this was a problem in one proprietary game recently, but as far as I understand this can be fixed by shipping with newest possible libstdc++, but I not fully understand all this dependency hell so I can be wrong. But RadeonSI depends on LLVM anyway and I doubt that maintainers will care about what Intel like or dislike. So I don't see any reason this won't be included into mainline as option that will be used by all distributions.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by Kivada View Post
              And yet you guys fail to see where Steam isn't using a DRM scheme that violates a damn thing. Getting your games through steam is like buying direct download .flac files from bandcamp.
              It gives Valve the power to take all your games away, at their whim, at any time. The other parts, such as calling home, are there as well, but that shift of power is the main point.

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              • #17
                I believe that you have consumer protection laws in civilized countries to counteract such arbitrary measures, like taking away access to something you bought, and in many countries they will even override bad EULAs and such.

                Anyway, developers can choose to not depend on steam drm in any way. Faster Than Light is one example where you can use the game fully without using steam after downloading it with steam.

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by ssokolow View Post
                  If Valve products didn't violate two separate policies regarding software on my system, I'd buy the shit out of Valve games too.

                  (I have a strict "No DRM, no piracy" policy (A.K.A. "must own what I pay for, must not implicitly endorse what I shun") and the Steam client runs up against the policy that the only non-games that are allowed to be closed source are the grandfathered-in BIOS, nVidia drivers, Flash, Skype, and Opera 12.x)
                  You use skype, then you might as well be using windows... backdoors ahoy.

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                  • #19
                    Originally posted by ssokolow View Post
                    "must own what I pay for"
                    Are you aware that when you buy a good ol' physical book, you don't magically "own'" it and every rights associated to it ? The person who owns the rights is still the author / editor. It's the same when you buy a non-drm'ed game... Same as downloading a GPL software doesn't magically make you its owner, you only own the physical medium.

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by _SXX_ View Post
                      So I don't see any reason this won't be included into mainline as option that will be used by all distributions.
                      Exactly. Also think about who sponsors this, it's not some small publisher, it's Valve! So they want it for SteamOS which is the main distribution for other developers to target. Does anyone really think developers porting to Linux don't have the SteamMachines in their mind and don't care when the game won't run there? On the other side a library mismatch with Steam and/or a proprietary game is nothing the Mesa team should care about. In other words: As soon as the code is ready and proven to be faster: Include it into mainline!

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