Neither is mine, the cost is extremely minor in this case, because steam is a gaming client, and the fundamental nature of a gaming client is non-essential and not integrated into the system deeply at all.
You could use this excuse to justify almost any type of proprietary software. Most apps are not deeply integrated into the system. That doesn’t make them ethical.
What you fail to understand is people being on windows is way worse in every single way than them having one proprietary app on their computer.
It is more free than Windows and I never said otherwise. I just said that it was still unethical.
There is huge benefit, more people are using much more FOSS, and the fact is, if more people were on linux, there’d be more foss software, which means better alternatives and outcompeting proprietary software.
But those people don’t care about their freedom. That’s the problem. They will always use proprietary software, because they only care about convenience or features. We need to change that. Only then our movement will benefit from this. We can’t let them get attached to Valve as long as they make proprietary software.
Steam ain’t that. It’s video games. And nothing else.
Games are software. If you can’t control what they do on your device, then you don’t control the device.
Steam isn’t going to be what “traps” them or anything, especially when it’s sandboxed, and when you sandbox it, it has literally no integration with the rest of your system at all.
You are assuming that a company that makes proprietary software won’t try to get more power over their users. Why wouldn’t they? Their users don’t even care. Sandboxing improves your security (which is good), but not your freedom. You still can’t see what the software does or change it, so that program is still unethical.