A Year Later, Linux Game Publishing Is Still Irrelevant

[frign]

Like GreatEmerald said, the comparison of a game to a movie is not entirely apt.

Your game binary may call home. It may install a rootkit. It may have other malware embedded, often called DRM. Even if it claims to be DRM-free it may have less desirable code in it.

Your movie is just data - you can do what you will with it, including playing it with an open source player.

This is wrong.

The movie may be data, but if you want to play Blu-rays in mplayer or VLC or any other OSS-video-player supporting it, you need to know the AACS-keys. Obtaining and using those keys is "illegal" (and new disks may even render your drive unusable), so, accessing the data on the disk is not as trivial as you put it, even if you do not even focus on how much processing-power it takes to decrypt the data.

[yogi_berra]

Like GreatEmerald said, the comparison of a game to a movie is not entirely apt.

Your game binary may call home. It may install a rootkit. It may have other malware embedded, often called DRM. Even if it claims to be DRM-free it may have less desirable code in it.

Your movie is just data - you can do what you will with it, including playing it with an open source player.

Your pirated porn movie can install a rootkit just as easily as your pirated game.

[curaga]

Your pirated porn movie can install a rootkit just as easily as your pirated game.

Please show me one movie with such exploits for at least two (2) current versions of open source players.

@frign:

Blu-ray is certainly an issue, but so far every movie also comes out on DVD.

[brosis]

I would definitely ask the question who really cared about GNU/Linux-Gaming, if it currently wasn't about losing our freedom.
Steam and other proprietary gaming-platforms are deliberately opposing software-freedom and thus might be even more damaging to GNU/Linux-Gaming, if it existed, than the "lack" of real software-titles.
We really should think about the motives for Steampowered to port their platform and if it is worth it; I don't think they do this in a non-self-serving way and thus rather in the interest of making the GNU/Linux-Users solely dependent on commercial interests when it comes to games.

Hello!
Lets try to address your issues:

Categories of people:
*1* The majority: people who use the software primary as tools and entertainment. Think about sat-receiver and a house wife.
*2* The minority: people who use software that is professional and reliable. They are always looking for the more stable, expandable, more performing and also cheaper software stack. OS is being part of it.
*3* The absolute minority: people from above categories who "burned their fingers", took time researching the area carefully, noticed FSF movement and started caring about it. So, they are basically above cases, but with new top priority called "freedom".

Situation "before" on these groups:
*1* Get windows preinstalled, play games there, expand windows market share, can't select anything else because the drivers for their hardware are top polished on windows due to market share.
*2* Get windows preinstalled, switch software stacks, do not even look at something else, because their software and the drivers for their hardware are absolutely optimized for windows due to market share.
*3* Get free operating systems, go through new learning curve, fight a lot of nuances and accept a lot of shortcommings, because of above cases. Because their OS is pain to use(for the reasons above, not belonging to "freedom"), and their choice is purposely limited by only these systems, they are referred as zealots or cultists or whatever, ie a minority.

Situation "now" on these groups:
*1* This group has Linux written on their gaming hub site - under separate category. They become curious, they accept that their hub owners hardly make a mistake - they trust them and this combination makes them explore the whole "freedom" concept. Essentially the effect is: windows market share sinks, together with monopolistic developer attention shifting towards more cross-platform development, other operating systems become more attention from hardware suppliers and thus advance in terms of features and abilities.
*2* Due to more developments of OS, and more buzz in media, thanks to above paragraph, professional developers see the alternative OS improve and thus they start considering it as an alternative as well.
*3*
Q1. Do users of this category become less free projects after their platform gets more attention and more proprietary options?
A1. No. Because there ARE more free projects under windows, than under alternative OSes - mostly because people were not aware of other systems, or that these systems were not polished enough, or simply not widespread enough. So users and supporters of free software get more free software.

Q2. Will inclusion of more proprietary features endanger free software?
A2. No.
** Firstly they are protected by license.
** Secondly they have proven their method to be efficient due to shift towards their OS and hence they will be invested by more curious users/developers.
** Thirdly, "before" - proprietary feature users were investing their money into different system and thus empowering complete concurrent of free software. They were either running proprietary titles on windows, paying both, and expanding proprietary ecosystem; or they were using emulators/layers such as WINE - but still investing into proprietary titles supporting windows-only infrastructure in those software.
"Now", they still pay for proprietary titles, but those titles invest into free software and use cross platform technology. They are also explosed to free software concept and will have much easier switch, in case they consider it.
Essentially they shift the market share towards free OS without affecting ANY of its projects.

Q3. What dangers are really present?
A3.
*** The danger that one-vendor-only solution will claim itself as crossplatform and misguide everyone to build on top of it. Read MONO.
*** The danger that new proprietary friends drag the closed-source development towards core projects of the ecosystem. The danger is that they may become either monopoly or "trusted cartel".
Thats it. But those dangers are no way as critical, as having them have own completely proprietary, completely isolated development ecosystem thus investing funds into forming new "standards", "software infrastructure" and features that are endangering free OS directly.

Remember, Apple, MS etc have explicitly forbidden GPL in their code and have put massive pressure onto "exclusivity", ie monopolistic features.
By doing the opposite - welcoming any codebase in userland(as in kernel/userland)we are pushing towards removal of exclusivity and thus stripping their "advantage", while maintaining our own.

I agree with Stallman on this question, and I think that the advantages completely overwhelm the disadvantages and if we play careful and do not force our closed-source friends, its an epic win for both.

[necro-lover]

RMS, rationally, believes that arrival of Steam on GNU/Linux can do both harm and good:

Thus, in direct practical terms, this development can do both harm and good. It might encourage GNU/Linux users to install these games, and it might encourage users of the games to replace Windows with GNU/Linux. 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?

But then he argues the damaging effect of non-free software:

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.

If you want to promote freedom, please take care not to talk about the availability of these games on GNU/Linux as support for our cause. Instead you could tell people about the Liberated Pixel Cup free game contest, the Free Game Dev Forum, and the LibrePlanet Gaming Collective's free gaming night.

He is not entirely positive if you actually read that and not just the title.

Its pointless with you because the OVERALL final conclusion of RMS is that steam on Linux is MORE good than "harm".

You make the mistake that you pick a Little detail "can do both harm and good" and then you don't get the overall final conclusion.

But maybe you miss the final conclusion because you think that it is manipulation and brainwashing.

Sure RMS manipulates people but every human who can write and do write do exactly the same.

On the other side you are worst in that kind of stuff.

[gamerk2]

Valve is basically porting its 10 year old, existing OGL code base over. CS 1.6 instead of CS:GA? Reeks of "easy cash" syndrom to me.

[Vim_User]

Valve is basically porting its 10 year old, existing OGL code base over. CS 1.6 instead of CS:GA? Reeks of "easy cash" syndrom to me.

Valve has the urge to rapidly broaden the the range of games available for Linux. I would assume that they port the titles first that have a good reputation and are fast to port.

What most people in this thread forget is that Valve does this not for the good of Linux or to get money from Linux users, they do it to secure the future of the Steam platform, which is endangered with Windows 8 and Microsoft's app store plans.
Gabe Newell can say that he does it because he likes Linux, but we all know that he does it in order to not let the Steam boat sink like the Titanic, hit by an iceberg called Microsoft.

[Veerappan]

Valve is basically porting its 10 year old, existing OGL code base over. CS 1.6 instead of CS:GA? Reeks of "easy cash" syndrom to me.

The original Half-life had an OpenGL renderer option, so porting Half-life probably wasn't a huge effort. After they had Half-life done, CS 1.6 was probably a no-brainer (given that it's just a mod for HL). Valve already has TF2 ported, which means that HL2 (and episodes), Portal, Left for Dead, and CS:S/CS:GA are probably on their way.

I suspect that Valve just wants to concentrate most of their bug reports and fixing on one game per engine for now.

[talvik]

Valve is basically porting its 10 year old, existing OGL code base over. CS 1.6 instead of CS:GA? Reeks of "easy cash" syndrom to me.

CS 1.6 is almost as popular as CS:Source and CS:GO combined. Who said they are not going to port CS:GO?

[TheScorpion]

Hopefully with Steam they can reborn. So far, the only game I found interesting from their catalog was Cold War. Maybe I'll buy it in the future. I've just tried the demo.

By the way, I cannot wait to play HL2 on Linux!!!