GNU Guru: Linux Steam "Unethical"

The GNU Website has statement from Richard Stallman where the founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation describes his concerns about Valve's plans to bring Steam to Linux (thanks Ars Technica). He explains the freedom to install Steam games will impinge on a user's freedom:
A well known company, Valve, that distributes nonfree computer games with Digital Restrictions Management, recently announced it would distribute these games for GNU/Linux. What good and bad effects can this have?

I suppose that availability of popular nonfree programs on GNU/Linux can boost adoption of the system. However, our goal goes beyond making this system a “success”; its purpose is to bring freedom to the users. Thus, the question is how this development affects users' freedom.

Nonfree game programs (like other nonfree programs) are unethical because they deny freedom to their users. (Game art is a different issue, because it isn't software.) If you want freedom, one requisite for it is not having nonfree programs on your computer. That much is clear.

However, if you're going to use these games, you're better off using them on GNU/Linux rather than on Microsoft Windows. At least you avoid the harm to your freedom that Windows would do.

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?

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.
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Re: GNU Guru: Linux Steam
Aug 1, 2012, 14:21
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Re: GNU Guru: Linux Steam Aug 1, 2012, 14:21
Aug 1, 2012, 14:21
 
stormpilgrim wrote on Aug 1, 2012, 00:53:
What made me chuckle is that he put in a caveat for the artwork in games... I guess he has lots of hippy friends that are those typical arty types and they have to eat somehow...

But yeah the guys writing games and other software should work 70 hour weeks for love...

I blame him for the Lada Niva I owned....

He's not saying people should make games and not get paid. The art comment can be expanded to mean any part of the ip that makes the game unique, just not the code. When the original developers move on, and a game still has bugs, you often see the community come out with unofficial patches that fix some things. But that takes a lot of work and there is a lot they can't do.

An IDEAL free-software game environment in my opinion would see old games updated easier to work on new systems, supported longer, new support added for new controllers that are released, better widescreen/fov support to fix things the devs for some reason didn't think about, and of course more games would have a healthy mod environment. New copies of the game being sold would still make money for the company, and people still wouldn't be allowed to make a few modifications to a game and try to sell it as their own.
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