Making a proprietary operating system is not the right decision. It’s unethical to take away people’s ability to control their own devices.
How does Valve prevent you from controlling your own device? Their version of Linux isn’t locked down, you can fully customize it like any Linux afaik.
Their system (and the Steam client) is proprietary, which means you can’t easily see what the software does or change it. If you can’t control the software then you don’t control the device. People deserve to have the 4 essential freedoms. This is why Windows is bad and it’s the same with SteamOS.
SteamOS is only bad when you expect it to support a variety of hardware. They promised to release it as a standalone and it’s still not there yet, too bad.
You are correct about Steam client though. Even if they keep the internals closed, the GUI part alone would be worth forking. I wish a chrome-less version would exist.
Steam Deck is a computer, so its users deserve to have full control over it just like their PC or smartphone.
You are correct about Steam client though. Even if they keep the internals closed, the GUI part alone would be worth forking. I wish a chrome-less version would exist.
If people can’t easily modify it, then its developers have power over users. You have to trust that they will not abuse that power, but they already do - with DRM for example.
Can you explain what parts of SteamOS are not controllable in a way that makes it more restricted than Arch, which it is based on?
with DRM for example
[If the account owns the game - allow user to download and run the game] is a DRM sure… But it’s kind of fair, no?
Can you explain what parts of SteamOS are not controllable in a way that makes it more restricted than Arch, which it is based on?
Valve won’t release the source code and I don’t use it, so it’s hard for me to tell which packages are proprietary and which are not. Steam client for sure is proprietary and it comes with the OS. Arch by default is Free Software (other than proprietary blobs in the kernel) and you can audit what each program does and modify it. With SteamOS you can’t do that, because Valve keeps secrets from you on your own device.
[If the account owns the game - allow user to download and run the game] is a DRM sure… But it’s kind of fair, no?
To play any game you have to install and run the proprietary Steam client and be logged in to an account. Even to play singleplayer games. Even if you bought a physical disc. There are stores that don’t do this: gog.com and itch.io. They provide an optional client for convenience, but you can just download a game’s installer from the website and install it on any PC any time you want. In case of Itch the client is Free Software so anyone can see what it does and modify it.
Valve won’t release the source code
That doesn’t mean you can’t control how it works. Most people don’t need sources of their Linux distros to use them as they want. It would be cool to have the source, but you wouldn’t expect them to have an official maintained repo since they spend much more resources on actual hardware that needs this distro.
Steam client for sure is proprietary and it comes with the OS
Yeah it seems to also be the only thing that is proprietary in SteamOS too.
To play any game you have to install and run the proprietary Steam client and be logged in to an account.
Are you clueless or what? There are too many ways to do what you want with SteamOS. You can use offline mode, desktop mode, play pirated games in any mode, install any controller software you like. Finally, install another Linux distro on it, or Windows. But people buy Deck because of SteamOS mostly since it creates the intended (and expected) experience.
Wanna know why we aren’t seeing many enthusiasts creating more handheld frontends for platforms like Deck? Yeah, not at all because the platform is locked behind DRM or other bs. But because the best experience most people expect is already available and it becomes better with updates.
Just because they made steam start on boot. Doesn’t mean you can’t control your device…
Steam (and other parts of SteamOS) is non free software, it can do anything on your system and there is no easy way for you to change that or even know what it does. Valve developers put themselves in a position of power over you. They keep secrets from you on your own device. This in itself is unethical, but they also abuse their users with DRM. How can you say that you have control in this case?
DRM is what publishers and developers want. If Valve didn’t have DRM they wouldn’t be anywhere near as big as they are today. The influx of developers happened when Steam released their DRM for the public.
They are not DRM free. They verify your ownership before letting you download games.
They are DRM-free. I can send you a copy of those games and you can run them on your computer. Without you having to log in anywhere or install an additional proprietary application. Without anyone verifying anything. Isn’t that amazing?
By that definition Steam is DRM free too. I can download tons of my games, pack and send them to you and they’ll work. My rough estimate is that about half of all games are like that. Half of the remaining games rely on Steam environment for community or multiplayer functionality.
Didn’t I read somewhere they were considering using NixOS instead of messing with unstable Arch and forcing it do stuff it wasn’t made for?
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Just out of curiosity, do you think that licensing your posts under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 makes it illegal to use them to train an AI? If so, why do you think that? I post GPL licensed code online, so I’m interested in this topic.
If you write code, you might be aware of the AI coding assistants out there. Most notable is probably Github’s Copilot. Well, that AI assistant has an ongoing case against it to answer the question you’re asking. So, just like you add a GPL (or other) license to your code, creative commons licenses are for text and media that aren’t code and I add it to my comments.
Whether they will have an impact has yet to be determined, so we’ll see if creative commons with a non-commercial clause is for naught or not.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11
#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell #!nix-shell -i bash --packages xautomation xclip sleep 0.2 (echo '::: spoiler Anti Commercial AI thingy [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11 ```bash' cat "$0" echo '``` :::') | xclip -selection clipboard xte "keydown Control_L" "key V" "keyup Control_L"This technically makes your comment more permissive to use, not less. At least if we keep the software analogy.
You do realise there are different software licenses, right and that they aren’t all permissive? Also, the license I’m using is permissive for non-commercial uses.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11
#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell #!nix-shell -i bash --packages xautomation xclip sleep 0.2 (echo '::: spoiler Anti Commercial AI thingy [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11 ```bash' cat "$0" echo '``` :::') | xclip -selection clipboard xte "keydown Control_L" "key V" "keyup Control_L"
Anything you write should be proprietary by default. So I don’t think you have to add this license to your comments just to achieve your goal. But it makes sense if you also want to give some extra rights to people.
If AI reads your code, but the output is something entirely different, why would that be illegal? Isn’t that the same as a human reading something? I’m curious what the courts will decide, though.
I don’t want to help Microsoft, but some of the arguments made in that article are strange. If AI means the end of software licenses, that means the end of copyright, which is a good thing. When AI gets better, we might be able to feed it leaked or decompiled source code and get something that we can legally use. That’s not the current situation, though. At the moment Microsoft uses libre, copylefted software to improve their proprietary program and that’s bad. But I don’t think we can do anything about it other than telling people to not use it.
My stance is just staunchly anti-commercial and I would rather see a non-commercial AI be allowed to use my text than a commercial one. Whether copyright law will reflect that is hitherto unknown - at least in the EU and the US, I think. Japan has already made a ruling that copyright doesn’t exist for AI - or so I understand it. IANAL
If AI reads your code, but the output is something entirely different, why would that be illegal? Isn’t that the same as a human reading something?
That line of reasoning is logical, however copyright has never made any sense to me. “Likeness” can be copyrighted. Copying a copyrighted work is not allowed, but coming up with a solution that is nigh identical to another in a “clean room” is legal. Using old black and white mickey mouse is now public domain, but adding color suddenly makes it illegal. Learning something proprietary on the job and using it immediately at another employer is illegal but wait a year and it’s legal even though the old employer never updated the solution.
It makes no sense to me and doesn’t seem logical at all 🤷 Laws are like scientific models: attempts at making sense of the world. Some are better than others.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11
#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell #!nix-shell -i bash --packages xautomation xclip sleep 0.2 (echo '::: spoiler Anti Commercial AI thingy [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11 ```bash' cat "$0" echo '``` :::') | xclip -selection clipboard xte "keydown Control_L" "key V" "keyup Control_L"