And Canonical also used to be everyone’s poster child for how to support open source development at an enterprise-ish level… since Red Hat had already passed off the baton on that. Which has led to the hilarity of people arguing in favor of rocky as an alternative to the shitshow that ubuntu is becoming?
This is a cycle that happens time and time again. This is WHY people need to avoid deciding that one company is their friends and another company isn’t. Instead, look at what the company is doing but be wary of how everything has repeatedly gone pear shaped in the past.
Because… Microsoft (especially since buying github…) actually do a LOT of really good work for the open source community as a side effect of supporting Windows (and WSL). I can say “Good job Microsfot” while still wanting nothing to do with win 10/11.
Similarly, Valve have and still are doing a LOT of really good stuff for “gaming on linux”. I am not going to pretend that is not in their own self interest and largely a way to fend off Microsoft slowly starting to make inroads to PC gaming again. I am also not going to forget the years of stagnation that more or less lasted from the death of Desura up until GoG and EGS started becoming a thing.
Because, again, look at Google. Chrome was an amazing product and the monetary investment google pumped into Chromium made “life” a lot better both for developers and users. And it forced Mozilla to get their shit together. And now Chrome may actively be killing the internet as we know it if not enough people migrate away.
Again, I like Valve. I have since I read interviews with them about Half-Life 1 in various magazines. I had (and still have) concerns over what it meant for Steam to win “the DRM wars” (I think we would all be better off if Brad Wardell got hit by a bus and his successor at Stardock won because GOO was shockingly nice) but I can’t at all argue that PC gaming is more alive as a result than it ever had been even before. But that doesn’t mean that Valve will always be “good guys”. Maybe GabeN dies underneath a collapsing cabinet full of his knife collection. Maybe he decides he wants to own a country and needs more cash.
But I am very cognizant of what can happen if the company that owns a de facto monopoly on an industry goes to the dark side. We have already seen exactly that happen with Microsoft and Google and others. Which is why I will advocate for Linux as a gaming alternative but keep “SteamOS” at arm’s reach. Same as I advocate for Linux as a consumer desktop but don’t overly recommend Fedora or Mint or whatever else. The beauty of Linux and open source (true FOSS or otherwise) is that it provides alternatives in the event a company or vendor shit the bed. And SteamOS… is very much a step toward a walled garden.
And Canonical also used to be everyone’s poster child for how to support open source development at an enterprise-ish level… since Red Hat had already passed off the baton on that. Which has led to the hilarity of people arguing in favor of rocky as an alternative to the shitshow that ubuntu is becoming?
This is a cycle that happens time and time again. This is WHY people need to avoid deciding that one company is their friends and another company isn’t. Instead, look at what the company is doing but be wary of how everything has repeatedly gone pear shaped in the past.
Because… Microsoft (especially since buying github…) actually do a LOT of really good work for the open source community as a side effect of supporting Windows (and WSL). I can say “Good job Microsfot” while still wanting nothing to do with win 10/11.
Similarly, Valve have and still are doing a LOT of really good stuff for “gaming on linux”. I am not going to pretend that is not in their own self interest and largely a way to fend off Microsoft slowly starting to make inroads to PC gaming again. I am also not going to forget the years of stagnation that more or less lasted from the death of Desura up until GoG and EGS started becoming a thing.
Because, again, look at Google. Chrome was an amazing product and the monetary investment google pumped into Chromium made “life” a lot better both for developers and users. And it forced Mozilla to get their shit together. And now Chrome may actively be killing the internet as we know it if not enough people migrate away.
Again, I like Valve. I have since I read interviews with them about Half-Life 1 in various magazines. I had (and still have) concerns over what it meant for Steam to win “the DRM wars” (I think we would all be better off if Brad Wardell got hit by a bus and his successor at Stardock won because GOO was shockingly nice) but I can’t at all argue that PC gaming is more alive as a result than it ever had been even before. But that doesn’t mean that Valve will always be “good guys”. Maybe GabeN dies underneath a collapsing cabinet full of his knife collection. Maybe he decides he wants to own a country and needs more cash.
But I am very cognizant of what can happen if the company that owns a de facto monopoly on an industry goes to the dark side. We have already seen exactly that happen with Microsoft and Google and others. Which is why I will advocate for Linux as a gaming alternative but keep “SteamOS” at arm’s reach. Same as I advocate for Linux as a consumer desktop but don’t overly recommend Fedora or Mint or whatever else. The beauty of Linux and open source (true FOSS or otherwise) is that it provides alternatives in the event a company or vendor shit the bed. And SteamOS… is very much a step toward a walled garden.