Tethering a product or program means designing it with features that can function only through communication with a restricted set of servers, through a protocol that you could not make your own server speak. That is always an injustice since it means you can't use the program without one of these servers. It is also a secondary injustice if you can't communicate with the servers in another way.

In some cases, tethering is used to do specific nasty things to the users. [External Link]

Quoting: chr

Spoiler, click me

I was gonna simply report it with a thoughtful comment, but then decided that it might do more good to share my personal opinion publicly (and potentially receive other opinions of what we are or want to be):

I get it that piracy is normal or even necessary for certain demographics (inequality is quite bad even inside countries or districts 😔!). But I don't think we should risk skirting quite that far this line of permitted speech about content punishable by those who hold power in our globalized society. I don't believe these power structures or their very selective enforcement are fair. (Corporations scraping for AI training data being another egregious example of this, also undermining even more semblance of a rules-based society; On the other hand, I'm glad copyrights are far less strictly enforced in poorer countries (in my experience)).

I wouldn't mind the comment quite as much if the commenter were risking mentioning punishable activities in order to provide more substantive value to the community AND they were subtle about it. There is a time and place to fight the power, but I feel this comment would be as valuable without allusions to piracy.

Any thoughts?

and the latest release brings Native Linux support to improve performance on Steam Deck.