Valve didn't invent Proton. As far as I understand, it's just a fork of WINE. I think the only difference is that it contains fixes for Steam versions of games. For non Steam games everyone uses WINE. I'm sure Proton is convenient for Steam users, though.
Not actually owning games sucks, but find me a digital marketplace that doesn’t say that you’re only “renting” them or some other bullshit.
Since GOG and itch.io give you DRM-free offline installers of games, I believe that you do own the games that you buy there. I haven't read their ToS, though. It is possible that they say the same thing.
Steam doesn’t call it renting, rather, I quote, “As a Subscriber you may obtain access to certain services, software and content available to Subscribers or purchase certain Hardware”, where the subscriber is the word to call any user that has a steam account, nothing less nothing more: “You become a subscriber of Steam (“Subscriber”) by completing the registration of a Steam user account.” https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#1
Thanks for finding the exact quote. They didn't use that word, but to me it sounds like renting. You have access to software as long as you are a subscriber. But I probably wouldn't mind this if their games didn't have DRM. Then, if at some point you stopped being a subscriber, you would still be able to play your games (at least the ones you've downloaded). Another interesting thing is that they can ban you for selling your Steam account. But before Steam became popular, it was usually possible to sell used games.
Also, torrents do exist, and guess what, they’re DRM free, just as you like it, I assume. That’s actually exactly why they should exist, imo: to preserve things.
The point is that DRM is unethical. I refuse to pay for anything that contains DRM. Breaking it is illegal, requires special skills and sometimes it's very difficult even for experts (Denuvo). If those games were Free Software, any programmer could remove DRM from them and distribute such modified copy. That's exactly why we need to get rid of proprietary software - so that developers don't have power over users. I also think that piracy should exist, but it doesn't solve our issues with software freedom. Nobody should restrict what people can do with their software and their computers.
Free Software can be legally distributed (it's one of the 4 essential freedoms that it gives you). It doesn't matter if it's commercial or not, someone can always give you a copy.
There is a game called Mindustry, which is a libre game that is sold one Steam and it seems to be doing fine. This is just one example of a commercial Free Software project.
Paying for open source software sounds good on paper, but if it is required, the software will never accumulate the users to make the development have any meaning.
Based on what you said, I'm not sure what you mean by "open source", but Free Software gives you the right to distribute the program (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms). So anyone who owns a copy can legally share it with you. There are commercial Free Software projects. The game Mindustry is one example.
I have started by at least supporting game developers on Steam.
Steam puts DRM in games and requires proprietary software (the Steam client), so you should consider not buying there at all. GOG's client is also proprietary, but its optional and there is a free alternative called Heroic Games Launcher. Itch.io has a libre client (also optional). As far as I know games on those two platforms are DRM-free.
Grayjay is proprietary. Its license doesn't allow you for example to modify the source code, which is one of the 4 essential freedoms. Programs that don't give you all of those freedoms are not Free Software.
This is not for everyone, but I like when they post their crypto wallet address, because then I can send them money anonymously (especially if it's Monero), it can be a one time donation and I don't have to create an account on some website.
Is it? On GOG you can download games without installing their proprietary client (there is also a libre alternative called Heroic Games Launcher, but that's made by the community). Itch has a libre client and it's also optional. Both those platforms don't put DRM in games, unlike Steam.
Steam has forced updates. This means that game developers can push an update that for example deletes content from your game and as far as I know, you can't really refuse it.
On a page of every game that is sold on Steam, you will see text that says "Buy". But I'm pretty sure their ToS says that you are only renting games from them. So they are misleading their users.
It would be nice if I could quit making proprietary software for a living. Maybe some day I will try making some commercial libre software and will see how it goes.
This is all true, but it's interesting how people often forget another simple option: the software is commercial - it is simply sold on some website/store. Just like you can buy the game Mindustry on Steam, but it is Libre Software and even though you can get the build for free on GitHub and its itch.io page, people still pay for the Steam version. I wonder why people forget about this option, since it's probably the simplest one.
Of course, Steam is a proprietary, unethical platform, so I'm just using it as an example - I'm not saying we should sell there.
I've read it, but I don't really understand the legal issue. I'm also not sure what could be illegal about VSCodium. It uses the Open VSX store for downloading extensions (but not every extension is on there).
It would certainly be better if VSCode was under a Copyleft license, so that it couldn't be turned into proprietary software and maybe that way addons would also have to be Free Software, like in Blender. But Microsoft clearly doesn't want that.
I’m not much against having repositories with plugins, extensions or whatever BUT they should be like Debian, you can just pack everything into images / a folder and use offline for ever when required.
Yeah, that's a good idea. They could also just be added to Debian, which would solve this problem, but there also would be another benefit for me. Most people don't care about that, but I want to only use Free Software. When I install something from Debian's free repository, I don't have to worry that it might be proprietary, because they only allow Free Software there. I don't have this certainty when installing software from most other places.
Same goes for modern Docker powered solutions and JavaScript frameworks.
Some JavaScript frameworks and libraries seem to be packaged in Debian. But most people use NPM, of course.
Yeah, when I used it, every command had like a second of delay. It was also buggy. But it has tabs and you can even split the window into multiple panes. So big improvement over cmd.
Free Software gives you the 4 essential freedoms. One of them is the freedom to distribute the program. So anyone could legally give you a copy for free. Sounds like what you want, no?
Even if the authors implement some kind of DRM, any programmer can modify the program to remove that feature and share the modified version with everyone. Technically that is also possible with non-free software, but it's illegal, pretty difficult and requires special skills.
I think they want to compete with GNU/Linux and attract its users. They made WSL for probably the same reason. They even have a terminal now that almost doesn't suck.
Valve didn't invent Proton. As far as I understand, it's just a fork of WINE. I think the only difference is that it contains fixes for Steam versions of games. For non Steam games everyone uses WINE. I'm sure Proton is convenient for Steam users, though.
Since GOG and itch.io give you DRM-free offline installers of games, I believe that you do own the games that you buy there. I haven't read their ToS, though. It is possible that they say the same thing.
Thanks for finding the exact quote. They didn't use that word, but to me it sounds like renting. You have access to software as long as you are a subscriber. But I probably wouldn't mind this if their games didn't have DRM. Then, if at some point you stopped being a subscriber, you would still be able to play your games (at least the ones you've downloaded). Another interesting thing is that they can ban you for selling your Steam account. But before Steam became popular, it was usually possible to sell used games.
The point is that DRM is unethical. I refuse to pay for anything that contains DRM. Breaking it is illegal, requires special skills and sometimes it's very difficult even for experts (Denuvo). If those games were Free Software, any programmer could remove DRM from them and distribute such modified copy. That's exactly why we need to get rid of proprietary software - so that developers don't have power over users. I also think that piracy should exist, but it doesn't solve our issues with software freedom. Nobody should restrict what people can do with their software and their computers.