I think it’s important to have boundaries. If we keep our operating systems fully free, it will be harder for anyone to pressure us to add proprietary components to them. But if our OSes already contain non-free components, it’s not that hard to add more. We not only want freedom, we also want to keep it.

It also needs to be clear for the people in our community that our main goal is freedom and getting rid of proprietary software. Convenience is less important.

I didn’t say that I’m never going to install any firmware updates. I just don’t want to put it in my system if it’s proprietary.

The world won’t change itself. If people did nothing 40 years ago, there wouldn’t be a Free Software movement.

It sounds like you are not using a fully free distro anyway. Most of the popular distros contain proprietary firmware, so what’s the problem?

I am forced to keep proprietary firmware in my OS to use the hardware and that’s what you are advocating for. You want everyone to be forced to do that. But I don’t want anything proprietary in my system. I see no reason why I should have a proprietary firmware package installed for my GPU to work. The firmware could be just on the device itself and if someone wants to change it, then they can install the package in their OS. But maybe there could also be some other way.

You don’t know what the proprietary update contains. It can be a security fix, but also a backdoor. People can decide on their own if they want to update, but I see no reason why I must be forced to have proprietary stuff in my system. I want a fully libre distro. I can’t switch to one, because I would have to give up on using AMD GPUs, because people like you say that this is fine.

That’s not certain and them getting absolute power also isn’t.

So to me it sounds a bit like the arguments that they like to use. Like:

if we accept immigrants, they will slowly replace us and destroy the country

Technically maybe that could happen, but there are many other things that could also happen and that you are failing to consider.

// TODO: fix this code

But nobody is saying that there shouldn’t be a way to update firmware. Firmware just shouldn’t a be part of the OS, unless it’s free. Adding proprietary components to our systems will only make it harder for us to keep our freedom.

I will be crushed when this happens along with millions of others, like you, who thought this could never happen again.

Be careful of the slippery slope fallacy.

No worries, he can optimize it later.

You can always write code for Free Software projects in your free time and contribute to a good cause.

The FSF’s stance is just based on our current capabilities. Most people still use proprietary operating systems. We are capable of developing free alternatives of non-free programs, even very complicated ones. But it’s not realistic to think that we can currently replace all firmware for any device if we don’t know how it works. The amount of products that have the RYF certificate is already very small. Even Librem 5 didn’t manage to get it. When it becomes easier, I’m sure they will change the requirements or add more levels.

I’m pretty sure Libreboot contains proprietary firmware now and GNU is planning to develop an actually libre fork. So it’s silly for the developer to criticize the FSF for not being radical enough. It makes me think that the person doesn’t really believe in what they are saying.

But then the author says they want us to have proprietary firmware packages in our systems. So they want our OSes to be less libre… They even compare not including proprietary firmware to burning books… I stopped reading after that.

I bought The Orange Box, so I had the same problem. All physical copies of games are like this now and Valve is the reason. That killed the used games market on PC. You used to be able to sell your game after you got bored of it, but not anymore.

GOG’s client is proprietary just like Steam and Epic, which is bad, but the difference is that their client is optional. You can get offline installers of games directly from the website, because games there are DRM-free. So that makes GOG better than those platforms. There is also a Free Software alternative client developed by the community - Heroic Games Launcher. It works with Epic Games Store as well.

Another store is itch.io, which sells DRM-free games and their optional client is Free Software. But this store only has indie games.

It’s not easy to have freedom when you are a gamer. Steam and Epic Games Store are both proprietary (but for Epic you can use Heroic Games Launcher) and so are most games. There aren’t that many libre games and maybe around 10 of them are good. I hope that will change in the future.

I don’t think it’s silly at all to demand that users should have rights and that they should be able to control their computers. Valve makes proprietary software, which takes away user’s freedom, so it is unethical. They could make money in an ethical way if they only wanted. SteamOS is proprietary software too.

I don’t know much about VR, but if Valve makes a headset that doesn’t require proprietary software, that will be great. It should then be used as an example that other companies could follow. But it can’t be used as an excuse for them abusing users in other ways.

Also someone need to be paid to develop open source software. This being the beginning of the topic and all. I’m happy for that to be Valve at the moment as they have shown the industry how to be better.

Certainly, but Valve’s business is mostly focused on proprietary software and DRM. When they do make Free Software, it seems to be for the purpose of attracting people to their proprietary platform.

I don’t doubt that Steam is convenient. I was just saying that we should buy DRM-free games when possible and support alternatives that don’t force us to use proprietary software. More freedom is better and if we don’t try to change something, we will be stuck like this forever and it might even get worse.

I say this as someone who daily drives a PinePhone

Same as me then, nice!

Proton is the directX to Vulkan translator

But WINE does exactly that, it translates different Windows APIs. I’ve been using it to play games (including Steam games) way before Proton was released. It has existed for 30 years now. Proton came 25 years later and according to Wikipedia:

Proton is developed by Valve in cooperation with developers from CodeWeavers.[2] It is a collection of software and libraries combined with a patched version of Wine to improve performance and compatibility with Windows games. Proton is designed for integration into the Steam client as “Steam Play”.[3] It is officially distributed through the client, although third party forks can be manually installed.

You can see for yourself that it uses WINE and other software that WINE also uses, like DXVK: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton

Not to mention that Valve managed to solve the problems around anti-cheats and all of this works with minimal tweaking.

If this is truly their achievement, then it is impressive.

Nice of them, to make a revolution and then just let the people actually have it, don’t you think?

If there is a revolution, then it seems that it’s mostly an achievement of WINE, DXVK and other developers. It is great that Valve contributes to Free Software, though. But that doesn’t change they fact that they also make proprietary software, which is unethical and they are doing it to attract people to their proprietary platform. WINE is licensed under a Copyleft LGPL license, so it’s also possible that Valve had no other choice in this case. Since last I checked even SteamOS was proprietary, there are good reasons to doubt their intentions.

Also DRMs are already not the shittiest malware big companies trying to install on your machine, it would be anti-cheat. Why noone talks obout them? There are methods to detect cheaters without installing a rootkit spyware on all the end-users PCs.

I talk about it, but most people don’t care about stuff like that at all.

Lol. Sorry, but the games and DRM are not why. The most important reason to it is that we’re losing proprietary software’s technologies. Technologies that might help advace our modern day of living. Also because what they’re restricting is basically a knoledge, and knowledge shoud be free, not because your poor ass can’t own their games.

My argument was that people deserve to be able to control their computers and to do that, they need to be able to control the software. Your reason is very important too. You can watch Richard Stallman’s talk for more: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM

And Proton is the example that Valve contributes to FOSS community, unlike literally every other major game company, even CDPR.

That is true.

Thats not even all of it to why i stand on my point, Steam prices are also the most humane, especially if we mention all this bunch of sales steam is famous for. They were there from the beginning, even though they could’ve done something similar to PSN in terms of pricing policy, given that steam was and still kinda is de-facto monopoly, since other game stores on pc have only the fractions of steam’s profits at the most.

What you are saying is true, but before Steam became popular, it was possible to buy used games on physical media for cheap. Now even physical copies of PC games have Valve’s DRM, so I blame Valve for destroying the used games market on PC (on consoles it still exists).

Yes. And as you can see it has 14k reviews on steam while factorio has 141k reviews.

Yes, but what is this supposed to prove? That proprietary software is more popular? Usually it is. There are many different reasons for that, but one of them is that there is simply more of it.

It’s also a game, so there is no productivity gain or loss associated with it. There is no on call IT support, but you also don’t need any and if something breaks, you lose nothing except the ability to play THIS game for a short while. It’s not a… webserver you run your online shop through where every hour of downtime costs you X hundreds of euros or dollars.

It’s similar to selling a desktop app or a mobile app. I can’t find the source code of AnkiMobile right now, but I’m pretty sure it’s Free Software. If you want an example of a commercial app that people might use to do work, there is Ardour.

That is interesting! I had no idea, since it’s packaged in Debian, so I was able to easily install it for free, without even knowing there is a paid version.

People can get proprietary software for free too, if they don’t mind pirating it. It might be illegal and the risk of getting malware increases, but many people do it anyway. Sometimes it’s even better than the original, because the pirated version won’t have DRM.

So in practice nobody has to pay for any software, any movie, etc. People just choose to do it. In case of Free Software getting it for free is just easier and safer. In theory this might mean that there is less incentive to pay for it, but some projects that I’ve seen seem to be successful. Maybe people don’t know they can get it for free, or it’s too much effort, or they are simply fine with paying.