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Comment by Ralith | Hacker News Reader

While I applaud what they're doing, it's a bit weird how that post keeps throwing around open-source rhetoric when neither Steam nor any of Valve's games are open source. The only regard in which this has anything to do with open source software at all is that the platform happens to be predominately GPL-licensed, and may conceivably become an indeterminate amount more popular if more games than L4D2 get ported.

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Is there something unclear about this?

"Our mission is to strengthen the gaming scene on Linux, both for players and developers. This includes Linux ports of Steam and Valve games, as well as partner games. We are also investigating open source initiatives that could benefit the community and game developers."

I'm sure as they work on the Steam client and as they port L4D2 to Linux, they'll start finding and fixing issues in the kernel/OS/related projects, thus contributing to opensource.

they already found at least one bug in the kernel: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/6/22/338

What 'open-source rhetoric'? It isn't a Valve Open-source blog, it's a Valve linux blog - open source is not really relevant at all to this post.

It's mentioned three times in the article, including: "We want this to be a community of open source game developers, communicating with each other and talking about current efforts and future efforts in a powerfully creative environment."

And the most damning:

>After all, isn’t that what open source is all about – the idea that collaboration and teamwork achieve amazing things?

Damning in the sense that a game company wishes to sell games commercially? God forbid that they do such a thing!

Yes, I suppose it is better for Linux if nobody attempts to sell commercial software which could work with Linux, ever.

Don't be melodramatic. Damning in the sense that open source, the idea, is not what they are interested in but are riding it's coattails in order to encourage developers who are interested.

This thread is a little overblown and it's too early to point fingers and thump chests - lets see what they put on offer first.

Unfortunately it's never too early for the Linux union to go big on the blame and drama. Sometimes the product doesn't even have to be out before someone starts the bile because they can't see the source.

It is ridiculous to begin talking about things as "damning" when a company is doing nothing but dedicating resources to the cultivation of Linux as a platform for video game development and (yes) the sale and consumption of commercial games.

The word "damning" should not even arise. Don't lecture me about thumping chests and waiting to see what they put on offer, I am responding to inflamed language being applied to a company for no reason other than that they sell software.

Relax, it was just bad word choice.

I meant damning in the 'Valve has been accused of miss-using the term open source' and here is perfect evidence, sense.

I love what Valve is doing and I want to encourage them. Still, their usage is just a bit, 'missing the point'.

He means that a closed source platform isn't exactly conventional open source collaboration. Sure, it might be a boon anyway, but that doesn't make the rhetoric accurate.

It is, since they recently hired SDL developer - and it appears he will be working on it full time, same goes for darkplaces engine creator. So this is direct help to open source libraries.

That is awesome news. Always glad to hear positive bits on the SDL front. http://lists.libsdl.org/pipermail/sdl-libsdl.org/2012-July/0...

They've been hired to work on their respective libraries and publish the code openly? What's Valve getting out of that?

these guys know linux graphics and audio stacks from the inside out. having such people around the office which you can come to, ask pretty much any question and get a meaningful answer is practically priceless IMHO.

Their libraries (especially SDL) are used when games get ported.

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