Richard M Stallman: Steam Is Good For GNU/Linux

http://www.muktware.com/4042/richard-m-stallman-steam-good-gnulinux

by shawndumas • 14 years ago

73 52 14 years ago

muktware.com

Lockyy• 14 years ago

A link to his actual post is always nicer than a commentary honestly.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html

alainbryden• 14 years ago

I agree. The OP is full of errors and typos.

Munksgaard• 14 years ago

  (Game art is a different issue, because it isn't software.)

Would anyone be able to explain why RMS has this stance? Game art is just bits and bytes, and are thus recreate-able by others (think of old school sprites for example), why is that so different from code?

mhurron2• 14 years ago

If it's not source code, he doesn't care how closed or restricted it is. It's what the computer does, not what you do with what the computer does that is his interest.

1782• 14 years ago

I think you got it almost right. The distinction is between Software and other Media (Images, Sounds). The Software has to be free because otherwise it could work against you (oversimplification). 'Source code' is misleading since, depending on how the artist produces the media, it technically might have source code without being user-run software (think vector grafics, MIDI with notes and synthesizer values, etc).

Tyrannosaurs• 14 years ago

That's fine for justifying the ability to view and modify source code for your own use, but his definition of free extends to being able to freely redistribute it.

What's the difference between that and being allowed to sample or re-edit music and video and redistribute it?

tedunangst• 14 years ago

I wonder what happens if your game uses SVG for its art.

yourcelf• 14 years ago

See http://freedomdefined.org/Definition for a view (not RMS's) which extends the spirit of the Free Software definition to "Cultural Works", including art, music, etc.

Creative Commons has adopted the language of "Free Culture Approved" for licenses which meet this definition. Not all CC licenses do (in particular, non-commercial or no derivatives clauses are incompatible).

Jach4• 14 years ago

From GNU.org:

> Specifically, free software means users have the four essential freedoms: (0) to run the program, (1) to study and change the program in source code form, (2) to redistribute exact copies, and (3) to distribute modified versions.

Not all these freedoms make sense for "non-functional work" like art. RMS outlines some of his views here: http://www.libervis.com/article/rms_on_the_ethics_of_non_fre... Paraphrasing, art (as opposed to software) is something contributed to society for enjoyment, software is for work. The minimal freedom of art should be shareable for non-commercial uses, with a max copyright of 10 years before people can create derivative works for commercial use.

I imagine there might be (or could be) a license that asks for the "source" of art assets; that is, a .PSD file, or a blender project, or a script that generates the image. That's a lot more useful to me than the final image itself, and a lot easier to modify if I wanted.

1782• 14 years ago

Food for thought:

If there would be such a license, one could still argue it offers not the most freedom possible. To take it to the extreme, the license could ask that all assets have to be in a format editable/compatible with FOSS :)

emillon3• 14 years ago

> I imagine there might be (or could be) a license that asks for the "source" of art assets; that is, a .PSD file, or a blender project, or a script that generates the image. That's a lot more useful to me than the final image itself, and a lot easier to modify if I wanted.

This is used in the GPL :

"The “source code” for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it."

And also in the "open source definition" that can be used to judge whether something is free software or not :

"The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program." [1]

[1] http://opensource.org/docs/definition.php

bmj• 14 years ago

Paraphrasing, art (as opposed to software) is something contributed to society for enjoyment, software is for work.

How is a game for work? To qualify this, I don't necessarily disagree completely with RMS' aims for free and open software, but I don't see the functional distinction between the functionality of a game and the art used in the game.

JoshTriplett• 14 years ago

RMS and the FSF take a fairly narrow view of what they push for freedom on: they only care about code. In my opinion, this stems from two issues.

First, I think that as people who write code, RMS and the FSF don't immediately see value in things other than code, and in particular don't see the value in supporting a community of developers around something other than code. If you don't know how to produce something, you might not see the value in making it open, because you personally don't have the ability to contribute to it. Many non-programmers don't immediately see the value in Free Software / Open Source Software, because they don't personally have the ability to contribute to it.

Second, the FSF has produced a large number of works of opinion, and they have rather specific thoughts about what they want done with those opinions, which for some reason they don't see as inconsistent with their views on software. Note that all of the essays on gnu.org/philosophy/ have a license that allows redistribution but not modification; in many different places, they've expressed the opinion that works of opinion need not have free licenses, because changing such works would change the opinions expressed.

Personally, this seems entirely wrong to me. If I take a copy of CSS3 and modify it, it no longer matches the CSS3 standard. However, I could still usefully use it for other purposes, such as talking about the implications of different CSS models, or making a proposal for what I'd like to see in CSS. And if for some reason I attempted to describe my modified version as CSS3 (or CSS3.1), that would make it no different than any other random bit of factual inaccuracy or buggy code on the Internet. The same goes for a modified version of a philosophical essay, or the script or art for a game.

mike-cardwell2• 14 years ago

Although the title is the same as the one from the article it links to, it is not what he says. He says there are both good and bad things about it. It's good if it stops you using Windows. He still categorises what Steam is doing as unethical.

As Lockyy stated, check out what he actually said here instead: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html

sigzero• 14 years ago

I do not agree with his "unethical" claim at all.

mike-cardwell2• 14 years ago

Many people don't. One of his core opinions is that the production/distribution of any non-free software is unethical. You can agree or disagree with him, but at least he explains and backs up his arguments with logic.

Do you know his arguments for this?

mseebach• 14 years ago

That seems to be a departure somewhat from the very doctrinal "you have to use all free software or it doesn't matter" (my paraphrasing). By this logic, Ubuntu is good, running GNU/Linux on whatever not-completely-free platform you have is good etc. etc. It's very pragmatic and I agree fully - I just didn't expect RMS to be so pragmatic.

nicholassmith• 14 years ago

I'd say it's still not very pragmatic, he admits the existence of the games is a good thing, however it's at the end where he recommends that people don't recommend the games in support of Linux that he kind of reverts to previous philosophy.

bitwize• 14 years ago

I don't think even Stallman is that doctrinaire. His attitude has always been free software is good, and proprietary software is bad; people's software use can be anything from all free to all proprietary; and anything that lets you ascend the gradient towards more free software increases your ethical standing.

In the 80s and 90s he even recommended to his lieutenants to purchase copies of proprietary software -- so they can begin work on free replacements.

_delirium• 14 years ago

He's long had a bit of that game-theoretic view, that it may be worth compromising if you don't think you can win a given situation with a hardline approach. That's the reason for the existence of the LGPL, for example, which is recommended to be used in cases where the quasi-ultimatum of the GPL wouldn't be a successful strategy:

Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library. There are reasons that can make it better to use the Lesser GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library.

This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another—no problem for them, only for us.

mrspandex• 14 years ago

Personally, I don't see games the same as other software. Generally, they are more like content (movies, music, etc). Especially in the world of game consoles, where the games come on read only discs.

Games that are able to be "modded" of course add additional value and surely open source games would only expand the possibility, but there aren't the same concerns of my work and data being locked away in a proprietary ecosystem. If a game from 10 years ago stops working, it is disappointing, but not debilitating.

geon• 14 years ago

A great point. The counter argument would be the recent development with drm that requires online authentication to run, so they can't be sold and will stop working at some point, most likely within 5-10 years.

gcp• 14 years ago

Or games that require closed-source servers where the server software isn't provided to customers, but only to select hosting partners.

betterth4• 14 years ago

"so they can't be sold and will stop working at some point, most likely within 5-10 years."

This is incorrect, it would be more correct to say that they could stop working at some point.

It's entirely possible (and has been done before) for the company to patch out the DRM before turning servers off or going defunct.

The internet is also full of no-cd cracks that generally circumvent this kind of always-on protection (at the expense of breaking multiplayer) without circumventing serial code or other protections.

user49598• 14 years ago

It's not about what kind of software they are considered, it's about code running on your system. In the RMS eyes, if code runs on your system, and you can't read/modify that code yourself, it's unethical.

jiggy20113• 14 years ago

I agree in principle certainly, I do prefer general openness (e.g even if your engine stays closed, allow a modding API or GPL the whole thing after X number of years ala id software) in games but I'm generally less concerned as long as the user experience is good (i.e not too dependant on third party services like "games for windows").

I guess though Richard would object on the principle that a closed source game can still do things that are "user hostile", for example DRM systems that have implications outside of the game playing (see the recent ubisoft vulnerability). You can also have places where the lines between "games" and "software" becomes murky (I guess minecraft might fit here, also graphics libraries like OpenGL that are primarily used for games but also have other uses).

There is also the issue that games can act as an attractive trojan horse to get people to use a closed platform (for example Xbox 360 exclusive games) and become used to closedness in software.

In theory Steam helps address the second problem, though from Richards point of view this could become a double edged sword. If Steam becomes too popular on Linux then it might become the preferred way for software vendors to package Linux software and popular programs stop bothering to offer standard .tgz or .deb versions and the platform as a whole starts to revolve around a closed source offering.

MBlume• 14 years ago

This is another area where I prefer Raymond's open-source consequentialism to Stallman's free software deontology. Raymond actually takes the time to evaluate the harms (http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4371) we anticipate from closed source software, and shows why we can expect a greater harm from OS or productivity software than from games or elevator firmware.

alwaysinshade• 14 years ago

I think there's a bigger picture that RMS seems to be missing. Simply look in the HN feed and you'll see that Square Enix is partnering with OUYA. OnLive is partnering with OUYA. Steam is coming to Linux. This is about cutting out the middle-man and bringing content to people without the enormous barriers to entry.

This is a coup in waiting and RMS is worried about whether content is free (or "nonfree" in his own words, both in terms of DRM and cost). This is greater freedom for producers of content and consumers alike, but not for tinkerers. It’s not the outcome that he wants but it could be one of the most important developments for open source platforms. He needs to step back and assess what’s more important - his rigid ideals or measurable progress for open source platforms.

Richard M Stallman: Steam Is Good For GNU/Linux

Related Stories