Valve open sources Mesa fork from SteamOS | Hacker News Reader

Valve open sources Mesa fork from SteamOS

github.com

134 pointstbrock28 comments

Anyone have a summary of how this fork differs from upstream? Is it mostly performance improvements? Bug fixes?

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steamos_mesa/compare/klusar...

the only changes are to revert DRI XCB bindings back to a custom handler, likely for preformance or bug fix reasons.

I'm glad at the very least Valve is adopting not only Linux programming practices, but Linux culture practices as well. Why are they doing this? I haven't the foggiest, but I like this!

Practically speaking maintaining their own private fork of Mesa is probably more work than it's worth. They really don't have all that much vested interest in stopping people from using this at all, and not releasing it might mean that people using steam on linux (without steamos) may get a bad experience that's not good for their brand.

Why? Maintaining a fork is pretty trivial so long as you don't deviate so far from upstream that it's hard to pull in upstream changes.

Every time I use a library and need to make changes that are unlikely to be accepted upstream, I just fork it and update it as necessary. If upstream adopts features that solve my original need, I kill the fork and use the original project.

Obviously there are scales at which this makes sense, but all situations are not equal. Mesa is not a small project and in the long run it will probably change a lot and in unpredictable ways.

Even then, though, sometimes even a small effort is not worth it.

> Why are they doing this? I haven't the foggiest, but I like this!

They've been hiring people from the Linux community, they can't expect to have hired them without discussing the matter of licenses of their work. Most GNU Linux programmers are very much license conscious.

Not every Linux developer is a for hard fsf person. I'm a card carrying open source developer (see a few of the projects I help maintain in my free time, saltstack salt and graphite) which both have thousands of users. I also write code for Linux fullye as part of $dayjob.

That being

It's in Valve's interest to see gaming on Linux succeed so more developers can support their Steambox platform. Nice move on their part to give back to the community.

I'm assuming they don't have a choice in the matter if they want to base their OpenGL implementation on Mesa (as opposed to writing from scratch).

What is Mesa here? There's no readme on the github.

An implementation of OpenGL, very important for the open source graphics drivers. http://mesa3d.org/intro.html

I wasn't sure what it specifically did and this helped: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Linux_ker...

Presumably they're planning to redistribute this Mesa fork to SteamOS users. Since Mesa's LGPL, wouldn't they be required to open-source this fork at that point anyway?

EDIT: Not actually LGPL. My mistake (see reply to reply below).

Mesa is MIT, mostly:

http://mesa3d.org/license.html

So this isn't required of Valve, as I understand it.

Grandparent here. I got fooled by going to the Github repo someone else linked in this thread. There were no licensy-looking files in the root, so the first place I checked was in docs/, and the first file I saw was COPYING.

So I just assumed the project was LGPL.

I know it's not a good idea to bring up the license debate, but the fact that we seem to should be grateful for this is what scares me about the use of non-copyleft licenses.

The thought you a brining up a license debate instead of being grateful to Valve and their developers for their hard work is what scares me about copyleft licenses.

One should be proportionally more grateful to the original Mesa developers, surely?

I guess if we are counting karma as points or lines of code, but not showing some gratitude from those you meet along the way or demanding things others is just impolite. The original Mesa developers gave their code freely and so did Valve. Bringing up copyleft every time someone contributes like forcing developers is a better way is a pain. It is much like all the "Why would I use X when I have Y" comments that float to the top.

A second point on the "more grateful" as the GPL values 1 line over 1,000s of lines of MIT, so I don't see how that can be an argument.

I'm far more grateful to the tens or hundreds of people who wrote the bulk of the mesa project, largely unpaid for it.

I'm hopeful you're grateful to each individually and not bringing up their collective choice of a non-copyleft license each time one contributed.

Valve open sources Mesa... Black Mesa... Half-Life... HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED!

Please. Let's not give Gaben any more distractions from Left for Dead 3.

EDIT: Yes... Yes... Let the butthurt FLOW through you! Hacker News is MUCH more professional and serious than those filthy casual peasants over at reddit!

Wow! I've managed to infuriate someone enough to downvote my OTHER comments too! That seems strangely reminiscent of behaviour I see on those other, filthy casual websites.

Fuck all y'all. I consider this mission an 11/10 success.

C'mon. I want you to do it. C'mon hit me. Hit me. HIT ME!

I want to downvote you, but I don't have enough karma. Upvote my other comments and once I have enough karma, I promise to come and downvote yours.

I'm pretty sure HN keeps an eye out for upvote and downvote behaviour like that. We don't know for sure, of course, because moderation is a complete black box and I don't believe there is any surefire way to guarantee just what code is actually getting executed server side. And of course there are the design choices to consider, like

"only those with X karma get to downvote,"

and

"everyone with less than X karma gets their comments pended first,"

and

"anyone above the pending threshold that is too liberal with their approval of pending comments will have their approval privileges revoked,"

and

"only those with X karma get to flag,"

and

"anyone above the flagging threshold that uses the function 'incorrectly' will lose the privilege,"

etc etc ad nauseam.

And we think ourselves so superior to other internet cultures.

Still, enjoy the handful of upvotes you got from me :D And feel free to downvote my comments once you hit the threshold (last I checked, it was 500 karma). I'm actually curious to see how long it would take to fall back down to 0. Mentioning reddit is a good way to get downvotes (as you can see) especially if you highlight this community's insistence on just how much better it is than reddit. Using "low/no-content" comments is another good way. That's how we distinguish our memes from everyone else's: everyone else's "don't contribute to the discussion." As if our own memes were somehow high art and reddit's the lowest of brows.

Of course, my account is more than a year old. So, according to The Rules, it seems I can "submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit," but certainly cannot submit comments stating otherwise.

But do feel free to downvote this as well. I am, after all, "[baiting] other users by inviting them to downmod [me]" and "complaining about being downmodded."

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