Linux Gaming

16064 readers

73 users here now

Gaming on the GNU/Linux operating system.

Recommended news sources:

Related chat:

Related Communities:

Please be nice to other members. Anyone not being nice will be banned. Keep it fun, respectful and just be awesome to each other.

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

698

Looks like Valve is preparing to release SteamOS to the public (or at least to third-party hardware manufacturers) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

65 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

SteamOS as a whole is not open source. Most of it is, but it also includes proprietary software (e.g. Steam itself). This is likely why you were downvoted, as SteamOS can be kept private without violating any license thus your first statement was false.

Valve could distribute each single piece of open source software they use on request to their customers, without publishing any guide to actually build it. (Thanks for linking to Valve's repo, which seems to match this statement.)

This is how Apple does it with Darwin, the BSD-derived open source core of macOS. Without all the proprietary parts it's not useful as an OS, even though they follow all the necessary licensing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

But the standard BSD license is permissive, therefore Apple doesn't need to do that.

The GPL still applies to large parts of SteamOS (at least the kernel though since it's arch based there's probably more). So for those source code needs to be provided.