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TPWitchcraft ,
@TPWitchcraft@lemmy.ml avatar

Valve is a wonderful contributor to Linux. Look what a beautiful wooden horse they have gifted to us!

okamiueru ,

Explain. I get the reference, so not that.

TPWitchcraft ,
@TPWitchcraft@lemmy.ml avatar

Valve is a capitalist company, aiming for profit.

They were heavily involved into establishing DRM in the video gaming world.

They were among the first to establish “FreeToPlay”, Lootboxes and whaling, a predatory business tactic.

They accepted right wing extremist games in the past.

They have a kind of monopolist web store for PC games.

They are known to use the embrace and suffocate tactic against community projects in the past (DotA, once a community driven project is now a trademark of Valve).

The linux gaming scene is flourishing, but this comes at the price of dependency. And not all this dependencies can be resolved at the will of the community; many of the users that came over in the last time are probably unable to start a binary without help.

okamiueru ,

I think you have a lot of valid arguments for why Valve isn’t a pure champion for all things good. But, that also wasn’t the question.

I’ve used proton more often than not with games purchased through GoG. Their contributions to wine and the layer on top is excellent. Sam Latinga is a Valve employee and creator of libSDL, which is also another significant and foundational contribution to FOSS.

A company can do a lot of good without having to be exclusively good. And as for Linux gaming, it wouldn’t be where it is without Valve.

asexualchangeling ,

Agreed, they aren’t a perfect company but a Trojan horse metaphor just doesn’t fit here, closest I could think of is that steam is closed source, but proton isn’t, and they also fund a TON of open source programs, including wine

Plibbert ,

I think the comment is meant to claim that while they contribute to these open source projects, the end goal is the ability to control those new arms of the emerging market to an extent. Kind of like what’s happened with steam where it’s been around for so long , has such a large community and quantity of content, that any similar platform that comes along is going to be at a serious disadvantage. Even large scale companies don’t even know how to compete with steam properly so far.

If the same thing happens to the Linux community within the next 10 years or so due to valves contributions. That could be not necessarily bad, but a serious change to the Linux culture. Open source culture could take a hit. Gabe won’t live forever, and he has a unique understanding of " you don’t fuck with the open source community, you work with them ". Once he’s gone, whoever takes over could take advantage of their foothold in the open source community, or at least try to. That would probably be bad.

TPWitchcraft , (edited )
@TPWitchcraft@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ve used proton more often than not with games purchased through GoG. Their contributions to wine and the layer on top is excellent. Sam Latinga is a Valve employee and creator of libSDL, which is also another significant and foundational contribution to FOSS.

Wine and SDL were around before Valve was involved. It is unclear if and how good they can prevail if Valve decides that they aren’t interested anymore. Structures that are lost might be hard to regenerate.

And as for Linux gaming, it wouldn’t be where it is without Valve.

Half on the way to a glorified console for most of its users? The Linux gaming scene is now a reduced mirror of the gaming scene for Windows and the consoles; imo it was to be more interesting before. There was a higher and more vocal interest in smaller and more experimental productions. Nowadays it is the same as everywhere else.

A company can do a lot of good without having to be exclusively good.

Companies do profit, not good. The Linux Gaming scene was once quite sensitive to privacy, self control, and independence. Lemmy is a dedicated left site. But some of the folks here are cheerleading to a monopolist corp like there is no tomorrow. I’m from Germany - if I hear people worrying about what will happen when the benevolent dictator dies (see above in this thread) I get the creeps.

ReakDuck ,

Its a Private Company which is not focused to gain Profit because Investors push to. That is true for literally every other company that has Investors.

Valve has a Money Machine and mostly don’t care for the next big Profit. They create creative things and behave human in my Opinion.

TPWitchcraft ,
@TPWitchcraft@lemmy.ml avatar

Its a Private Company which is not focused to gain Profit because Investors push to.

MARS is also a private company and has a section for child and slave labor on the Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars,_Incorporated#Child_la…

ZF is a private company and produces weapons.

As I already said, Valve has a history of unethical and predatory business tactics. Do you suppose they do these for fun? (and would this improve things in your opinion?)

Private companies are market participants and have to act in their interest, or go eventually down. Valve wants to make revenue with their investments. The Linux community is at best a vehicle, and at worst a target to them.

ReakDuck ,

Good points tbh

Gadg8eer ,
@Gadg8eer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

And they were nice enough to leave the unit they gifted to us locked inside, safely and visibly trapped in the bars of a cage where they can’t stab us with the pointy fork they invented!

highduc ,

I saw the news that Microsoft is eying to buy them. That’d be a tragedy and we’d say goodbye to such contributions.

dlove67 ,

I think Microsoft’s valuation is woefully underestimated

Also GabeN would have to agree to sell it, it’s not really up to anyone else (and I don’t think he’s really interested)

RassilonianLegate ,
@RassilonianLegate@mstdn.social avatar

@dlove67
Honestly considering his history with Microsoft he probably had a good laugh when he found out they wanted to buy Valve
@highduc

highduc ,

I’m worried that Gaben isn’t immortal and he’ll eventually die/retire/sell etc, and the people in his footsteps won’t share his vision. Throughout history this has been an often repeated story.

chaorace ,
@chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Is Gabe really that irreplaceable? The way he runs the company (flat-hierarchy), it’s mostly self-governing – the truly defining characteristic of his leadership is his willingness to be as hands-off as possible. A like-minded successor or even governing council could probably quite effectively handle things in Gabe’s absence.

Well… regardless of that: nothing lasts forever, but that’s no reason to assume that things will change for the worse. Gabe seems to put a lot of deliberate thought into his actions, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he has already taken care of preparing for a smooth and faithful transition away from his leadership when the time comes. Who knows, maybe they’ll even do a better job than Gabe could?

Ilflish ,

I think on top of this, it’s probably safe to say there is already a plan set up to pass to someone Gabe trusts considering the hierarchy

merc ,

The way he runs the company (flat-hierarchy), it’s mostly self-governing

Is it really? Or is it a dictatorship under Gabe, but he’s a benevolent dictator who very rarely uses his dictatorial powers? Are there any influential people at Valve who don’t share his vision? Or is he using his power to softly, maybe even unconsciously, ensure that everyone influential sees eye-to-eye with him?

Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing. I like Valve and I like its leadership. But, I don’t think there’s any chance it would survive his death or his stepping down.

chaorace ,
@chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

To be clear, by using the term “flat-hierarchy” I was indeed suggesting a situation that’s exactly as you say: a company ruled under an iron first used sparingly – ergo “the truly defining characteristic of his leadership is his willingness to be as hands-off as possible.”

We can of course only speculate as to the soft power dynamics at play, although we can be certain that a soft-power dynamic does exist. I even agree with you when you state that this dynamic is unique to Gabe’s specific personality and individual mannerisms and not something which can exist without him. Where we seem to differ, however, is in our opinion of how important Gabe’s special flavor of soft power really is – is it the secret sauce or nothing special?

I argue that it’s nothing special. Given the right hand-picked successor, I foresee an uneventful transition and not a catastrophy. Some things will get easier and some things will get harder, but I think the overall structure and mission of the company will ensure a certain measure of continuity. If anything, I’m actually optimistic; the mere presence of a new leader will help change internal perceptions of what’s possible and help bring about some exciting new ideas.

merc ,

I argue that it’s nothing special.

I disagree given that as far as I know, Valve is the only company in the world that operates this way. I’ve worked plenty of places where the leadership talked about not having a hierarchy, but none of them could actually pull it off. When push came to shove, there were always bosses and those bosses had bosses, and decisions flowed down from the top. There are probably small communes where they’re able to make decisions using consensus, but Valve is a 1000 person company that’s a key player in a major industry.

foggenbooty ,

This is my fear too. No doubt there are great people working at Valve, but Gabe is responsible for how customer first the company is. I too worry that Valve will fall when he’s gone.

galmuth ,

Valve are a private company, so Microsoft can’t just barge in and buy it up.

Considering the investment Valve has poured into Linux because Gabe doesn’t trust Microsoft enough to have his business rely on Windows, I’d be pretty shocked if he decided to sell up to Microsoft.

foggenbooty ,

Valve is my favorite company. Not just because I like video games, but I love the way Gabe runs it. Valve is so customer focused and deserves the “don’t be evil” slogan. I am very scared of the day we lose Gabe because it’s his vision that drives them. Selling to Microsoft would destroy everything that makes them good.

ezchili ,

I’m really glad they let them add support for case insensitivity in ext4

I would’ve 100% expected some prideful cunt to block it

Rustmilian , (edited )
@Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

Would that mean that EXT4 is now compatible with Windows?
I know the goal is specifically for better Wine support but wouldn’t this extend to Windows itself?
Obviously it wouldn’t be supported by Windows directly but hypothetically?
I don’t know the technical details of the EXT4 case-insensitive support so maybe someone can shed some light on this.

synestine ,

Not really. Windows only supports FAT and NTFS filesystems natively. There was an old ext-fs driver back in the day, but I have not looked for one in a decade or more. There might be one out there already.

The deal with case-insensative support is likely from Windows users who are annoyed that Readme.md, readme.md, and README.MD are separate files on ext4 but the same file in FAT or NTFS. UNIX and Linux come from a school of thought that allowed you to do things like use different case in filenames.

mr_MADAFAKA OP ,
@mr_MADAFAKA@lemmy.ml avatar

Also presentation is available on Youtube starts at 4:12:05

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