Quoting: MayeulCyou are not necessarily free to use or redistribute free software as defined by the FSF. The GPL restricts your license choice, for instance.

The Free Software Foundation makes it pretty clear what the four essential freedoms [External Link] are, including this:

You may have paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismIMO "Open Source" should be split into two new definitions:

Public Source
Libre Source

What you'd like to refer to as "Libre Source" is literally the Free Software [External Link] as defined since 1986. Indeed, "Open Source" is subject to misunderstandings, which is why Richard Stallman explained Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software [External Link].

Ironically, "Free Software" also needs clarification to the meaning of "free", which is explained as “free speech,” not “free beer.”

What you proposed is also open to interpretation, with "Public Source" sounding like "Public Domain", which some people know as free to use and redistribute, which cannot be applied to everything released as open source software, but only to free software. As for "Libre Source", I guess that would work, but then almost anyone who cares about software licensing already knows that "Free Software" covers that, so is it really worth coming up with a new name? :D

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe context is entities that act like dicks. When companies do it, I have no responsibility to give them the benefit of the doubt etc. With people, I do. But in your case, I'm running low on doubt. Really, how hard is this and why is it so incredibly important to you that when you badmouth me it shouldn't be allowed to count as badmouthing?
It seems to me you're operating a double standard; your own behaviour doesn't have to measure up to your admonishments. While lecturing on good conduct, you sneer at me, then talk down to me for pointing it out. Your own conduct doesn't become good just because your wording is glib.

When you make general statements, like how you speak ill of people and corporations, it helps if you put that in context, like you did just now, so people can't misunderstand that. That's why I clarified some of my original thoughts in later posts, and I asked you to do the same.

Quoting: EikeI wonder if kneekoo understands the word "shaming" used here more harsh than other people. They are having an electron up, which is portable by very nature, so "shame on you, Epic!" is nothing to harsh, I think.

"Shame on you, Epic!" is quite literal and the context of that post was EPIC not making a Linux version of the client which would be easy considering they used Electron. But if they're not ready to support the games on Linux, then making the client available for Linux makes no sense even if it's technically possible. So there's no need to shame them on that business decision, because that's not an anti-consumer practice like exclusives.

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Quoting: scaineNo one is "shaming" Epic for not releasing the client on Linux. Where are you getting that from?

I put a link on shaming, to the forum post that got a lot of likes.

Quoting: scaineBut I'd happily shame them for their exclusives. They deserve a bit of shame in my opinion. But you're doing your best to defend them, which is odd, because you keep claiming to understand that they're bad.

As much as I hate exclusives, especially when it's about sequels to games that I liked, or games that weren't exclusive up to a certain point in time, shaming feels a bit too much for me to do. I will complain about it, but I'll leave it there. So I don't and won't defend anyone making exclusives, but rather ignore those games. I just feel that we should do fair, level-headed criticism and don't fall into shaming or worse, because it can alienate people from the Linux community, something that CDPR pointed out as a problem (link) and the reason against porting The Witcher 3.

This is what we should try to avoid:

I cannot help but feel this damaged CDPR's view of the Linux platform irrevocably.

Quoting: scaineThere's other pieces in your latest mega-reply I disagree with, but I'm tired, and this discussion has run its course, I think.

It's long indeed, but I thought it would be better than separate posts to each post that I wanted to reply.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI gave you a paragraph explaining how I feel there's a duty to be nice to people, as opposed to the lack of such a duty towards companies. Your response of

Not to speak too ill of normal fellow human beings? Wow, you must be popular with people who don't aim to please you. Forgive my sarcasm

Was basically accusing me of being nasty to people, precisely the opposite of my point, which was, to show the same confidence in my statements you do in yours, perfectly clear. [...] your misinterpretation led you to go ad hominem, which I haven't done with you.
It was an unpleasant thing to say. I would be happy if you retracted it. And doing so would be consistent with your repeated claims to niceness and constructiveness.

Have you re-read what I asked you to, to confirm that I didn't say that you (the people on this website) badmouthed Valve? Because sometimes I'm not specific enough and my words can be interpreted in various ways, but in that case I see no reason to believe that by "the Linux community" I meant this community specifically.

And I quoted you when I made that statement. Here are your words, in bold, to understand why I paraphrased (not attacked) you:

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI have some responsibility with normal fellow human beings to give them some benefit of doubts, to not speak too ill of them, to take into account their point of view and so forth. That responsibility does not extend to corporations and is seriously diminished when it comes to their executives while in an official capacity.

Your own words imply that you speak ill of people, just not too ill. How else can that be understood? Because if you don't speak ill of people, why would you even say "not too ill"?

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou're making an unwarranted assumption: That words have no effect. Ask the multi-billion dollar advertising industry about how true that is. [...] So if there is a corporation, and it does things I dislike, so I speak ill of it, and some people agree with me and refrain from doing business with it, that was not pointless. The extreme case is the boycott, but negative buzz has hurt plenty of companies in the past. So you're quite wrong, it's not pointless at all.

I could've been more clear, so you don't get that impression, but there's a difference between speaking ill and constructive criticism. I prefer the latter, because speaking ill not only doesn't guarantee a positive reaction, but it can alienate people, like we've seen CD Project Red and The Witcher 3. Criticism should be done tactful and mindful, at least so we don't burn our bridges.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy[...] it's always possible that you have bad motivations, but I have no particular evidence of it being so, and even given some I would give some benefit of doubt if the evidence wasn't good. I explain this because despite getting on the high moral horse, you don't seem to be doing that, you are instead getting personal and I don't appreciate it. So no, I don't forgive your sarcasm and would appreciate an apology for it, especially since your sarcasm seems to be the result of working hard to negatively misconstrue what I was saying.

I don't have bad motivations and there's no reason to assume I worked in any way to misconstrue said things. Maybe you will also clarify some of the thoughts that you feel I misinterpreted.

Quoting: CybolicI've been running Linux as my main OS since 2000 and I don't remember Valve ever being bad-mouthed in the Linux community.

It's too old to easily find links to the forum/reddit posts I had in mind, but many Linux users wanted Steam on Linux and the topic raised different points of view, eventually leading to Richard Stallman saying [External Link] that (paraphrasing) it's not good, but still better than running the games on Windows. But of course what RMS says doesn't prevent purists to bad-mouth closed-source software and its creators, which is what I referred to.

Quoting: CybolicI don't see anyone's bashing Epic for "a" business decision or is targeting their lack of Linux support, but looking at the company's practices in general, there's certainly enough to criticize - just like a large part of the general, non-Linux gaming community is already doing.

There's shaming (22 likes so far) for the client not being released for Linux. And there's also negativity around EPIC's invitation to Lutris for financial support - which I assumed, in the context of the news, that it wouldn't be interpreted as any other kind of support.

Quoting: CybolicSure, but there's a difference between wanting money and actively acting against the consumer.

True, but then where's the criticism for Valve's poor maintenance of sold games? There are plenty that won't run at all [External Link], or properly [External Link] on newer versions on Windows without tweaks that the users post in the Steam community. GOG is much better than that. But GOG still has DRM games [External Link] on a platform they claim is focused on DRM-free games. This is indeed a place for the EPIC news, but some of the posters here behave like others don't do anti-consumer stuff.

Quoting: CybolicThey aren't. Lutris added support for them, not the other way around.

By support I meant EPIC's invitation to Lutris for a grant. That's pretty much being open to support the community in the effort of making the EGS client work on Linux. And whatever anti-consumer stuff they do, being open to support the community early on is still a good sign that things can improve. That's why I'd rather like to see constructive criticism, acknowledgement of the positive news and maybe a courteous encouragement towards EPIC to be more consumer friendly than the kind of drama we see here.

Quoting: orochi_kyoI dont recall anyone on Valve saying "Linux is not good". Now not even Epic is being bad with Linux, they just dont care.

I mentioned above what I referred to, in my reply to Cybolic.

Quoting: orochi_kyoThose people there steal, so I steal, those people there murder so I am a murder, these kind of arguments are just too old.

Even in this era of radical capitalism, some companies respect the environment, some pay good money to their employees and left them go to home at 5:00PM, it seems that you rely on your "everyone else do it, so" argument, to justify how shitty Epic is.

I didn't say nor imply that. I don't like anti-consumer practices but I pointed out that every store deserves its share of criticism. But it helps if we do it politely.

Quoting: orochi_kyoPragmatism is not a word that describes you. I dont know why you almost write a wall of text when you could only resume your reasoning in the old argument that "one just have to follow the trend, the status quo"
There are people who goes according the status(you) and others who try to change it with little things as not installing or buying games from companies like Epic. Maybe things will not change today, but it will change eventually, [...] but Im not installing this and when Valve or Gog or anyone else does shitty things, I go to their social media and tell them directly, not wasting time playing the pragmatic guy who thinks everything is shit and nothing can be done about it.

You attribute me things that I didn't convey in any form. The fact that some people are ranting about EPIC's bad consumer practices doesn't take away from the fact that I dislike the very same things but I just use a different tone. Besides, I didn't even encourage anyone to get anything from them - even for free.

My take on this is that criticism is important and it's better when it's done well. Letting them know why, even on a regular basis, is something we should do. Buying from them is everyone's choice, although nothing sends a clearer message when the sales are low as long as the criticism goes on. But it's still in our best interest to do it in a civilized manner.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: orochi_kyo

Quoting: kneekooMaybe some people don't know or have forgotten that Valve was bad-mouthed in the Linux community before they worked on a Linux client.

Any source of this, because I dont recall anyone on Valve saying "Linux is not good". Now not even Epic is being bad with Linux, they just dont care.

No, the other way around. kneekoo is saying we used to badmouth Valve back before they made a Linux client;

No, what I said is clear. Maybe read it again.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI see no reason to consider squat. [...] As a consumer, I'm a Linux user. If they consider it too difficult or expensive to cater to my wants, needs or interests that's understandable but not a reason for me to give them money or even hesitate to speak ill of them.

I see no point in wasting energy by speaking ill on any manufacturer who doesn't make the car that I need. I just go to the ones who make it and pick what's best for me. After all, if I keep shouting at those who don't make what I need, does it make any sense to expect them to starting making what I want? Do you get pleasure from people speaking ill of you and start doing what they want, as a result?

Quoting: Purple Library GuyAnd further, corporations are legal entities established for the express and, these days, sole purpose of extracting money from the public. [...] I have some responsibility with normal fellow human beings to give them some benefit of doubts, to not speak too ill of them, to take into account their point of view and so forth. That responsibility does not extend to corporations and is seriously diminished when it comes to their executives while in an official capacity.

Not to speak too ill of normal fellow human beings? Wow, you must be popular with people who don't aim to please you. Forgive my sarcasm, but my point is that that's both unnecessary and not constructive. I share your distrust in corporations, but that doesn't make me any less objective when it comes to what's good for me. If I can fairly use them to my benefit, I will do so. If not, I'll focus on those who can provide me with what I need. I'm grown-up enough to know that not every company or corporation will do what I need.

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Quoting: GuestI don't mind a company for not supporting my small platform because of a business decision because we're not yet profitable, but up until now that really hasn't been seen. Now that Epic sees Valve has paid out to Codeweavers and done a great deal of work with Proton/Wine, now they can jump on that bandwagon for a few thousand dollar grant and take some of those customers too. It's shady...

I started being a sysadmin since the MS-DOS and Windows 3.x era and I can easily see how different it is to support different versions of Windows, let alone completely different OS families. From a business point of view, it makes perfect sense to focus on the huge market share first.

Maybe some people don't know or have forgotten that Valve was bad-mouthed in the Linux community before they worked on a Linux client. And, by far, they're not as good as GOG at keeping (old) games functional/supported on various Windows versions, the Linux Steam client still doesn't have Broadcast support after all these years, and their business practice is also far from ideal [External Link].

Quoting: GuestIt's sad to see someone defending Epic on a Linux based website when overall, Epic and Linux's relationship is only being held together with a string. Hell, the only reason Epic even made the Unreal Engine's Linux support better at all was Valve.

There's no excuse/defense in my earlier post. EPIC, Valve, GOG, all have shady anti-consumer practices - yes, even GOG. They all do it for money, it's just that some do it better for their customers, to a certain degree. But the EPIC store is new and even if they had solid plans to expand to Linux territory, I won't hold my breath until that happens - because I believe it will happen at some point.

Valve still has a lot of work to do, GOG hasn't even hinted at a soon-to-be GOG Galaxy for Linux, and their Windows version only came out of beta 2 years ago. It's only logical to see how things move slowly for others as well, so it makes no sense to bash EPIC this early for a business choice. It makes people look like haters, which is why I kindly reminded everyone that we should try to be better than that. Because making ourselves look hostile is not a good idea for a business that would naturally expect hostility in their customer support departments, and bad reviews for even the slightest mistakes. Would you want that for your business?

Quoting: GuestThey are trying to be shady and take as much money as possible and they don't care about you and I because we are too small.

Every business wants our money - it's the purpose of their existence, so never expect any company *not* to want as much of your money as possible. That's how capitalism works: profit first. Even the Polish GOG did their financials in a tax haven (Cyprus) for years, and only decided to fully move their business to Poland after Cyprus lost its tax haven status. So yeah, businesses can look weird and shady in various ways.

And long before Microsoft acclaimed its public love for Linux, it still tried to enforce its Universal Windows Platform (over win32) onto software developers and that made both Gabe Newell (Valve) and Tim Sweeney (EPIC) to voice their concerns about it. The fact that Valve made the leap to Linux before EPIC makes sense - Valve had a horde of games on sale in their store, so they wanted to give Microsoft a solid reason not to mess up. But just in case Microsoft messed up, at least Linux would be a better world to grow in, compared to the other money-hungry business behind macOS. Valve choosing Linux was a better decision because PCs are by far more popular than macs, and with Linux they had access to the source and do whatever they needed with it, no NDAs and profit shares required by Apple, had they chose macOS. And as bonuses, they would get to become trend setters for others and gain popularity in a userbase minority that hadn't been tapped into (financially) seriously by other companies.

Quoting: GuestOf course, let Valve do the heavy lifting and tossing the Lutris guys a few thousand bucks to pick up on all of Valve's work sounds appealing to them.

The fact that they supported Lutris not even 6 months after the release of the EPIC store is rather an indicator that they're interested about the Linux market. Clearly they're not ready to commit to it, and there are a lot of reasons, like getting enough experienced people to take care of the development and support of all Linux-related software. Because you don't want your Linux customers to feel treated differently compared to Windows customers, right? And you can't make that happen with Windows-people, so it will be a process for EPIC to jump into new territories. Because doing Unreal Engine 4 for Linux is one thing, and addressing customer support issues for a host of games on Linux is another.

Quoting: GuestI'm sorry, but until Epic becomes a company I can respect, I will not have any need for anything from them, even free titles.

Surely that's your choice, but if they expand to Linux you will probably regret not adding the free games to your library. As for respect, I think you're turning a blind eye at everything wrong with Steam and probably GOG, because both of them have shady/anti-customer practices and they got a lot of (fair) criticism for it. That doesn't mean I won't continue buying games from them if I like their offer. I don't have to like them to do business with them. I just don't have to dislike them to an extent that makes me avoid them.

Quoting: GuestThe Epic store is a mirage. It looks all shiny and new but if you put your faith in it you're probably going to die of dehydration.

I don't put faith in businesses. I look at them pragmatically, and try to get the best from them, just as they want from us. It's only fair.

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How about we look at the Epic Games Store (EGS) like it's something new? How about acknowledging the need for a business to establish a new product first, and later evaluate expansion opportunities? How about considering the fact that opening the EGS client for Linux-based operating systems also means dealing with a different set of other customer support issues?

My point is that whatever their plans are, it makes perfect sense for them to be cautious with a market that they're new to. It's only logical to take smaller steps and see where it leads, while making sure what is built can sustain itself, because no one wants to burn money just because they have a lot of it.

As a Linux user for nearly 2 decades now, I also want more software available on my distros of choice - or at least the most popular ones. But we know a long list of reasons why Windows still has a large market share and how that impacts the decisions of other software makers. So why not leave them to do whatever they have planned and see where everything goes, without any kind of drama? We can still criticize the exclusive games, in a civilized/mature manner, without throwing them under a bus for not supporting Linux early on.

Aren't we supposed to be "smarter" than the average PC user because we're aware of, care for and uphold privacy and software freedom? Let's also try to be better people, not just more informed. I'm tired of all the drama we see all over the internet. Let's make our community a better one, for fun's sake.

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As a developer I can understand that every little feature has implications somewhere. It's not easy to just come out with new stuff that works perfectly and satisfies the majority. But then there are old issues with the Steam client and its platform that I can't understand why are still unsolved to this day.

Here, just two examples:

- During this winter sale I tried to buy 2 controllers, but I could only order one at a time. That's stupid and after I contacted their support I got some fruitless "bla bla" and I gave up. It made no sense to waste money on two shipping fees due to the basic missing feature of allowing the customer to get 2 items in one purchase. They could've also prepared the store before their hardware was released, so we can buy more than one per order, but either they don't care that people have to pay extra shipping fees or they get something out of it. They can't be that stupid to completely miss a detail like this, right?

- For a while now, I have plenty of downloads/updates with 0 bytes. Now I can understand that someone messed up, but a few simple features would make this issue much easier to ignore: "Start/Queue All" and "Remove All (Completed)". Why isn't this issue addressed? Who knows...

Huge amounts of money flow into the Steam store, so I hope the other stores will motivate Valve to step up. Obviously, I have plenty of reasons to like Steam or I wouldn't have a lot of games and use their platform, but I dislike seeing them dragging their asses not fixing simple things that keep getting in our way.

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