http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU3OTc

"Valve will be making all of their games -- past, present, and future -- available for free to Debian Linux developers.

Collabora, the well known open-source consulting company, has been working with Valve on the Debian-based SteamOS. They've also been collaborating for other ways for Valve to better interact with Linux developers and they've decided to offer up the entire collection of Valve games for free to Debian key ring developers.

Official Debian developers can contact Collabora with a signed email that's part of the Debian key-ring to gain access to all of Valve's Steam games for free.    Debian developers wishing to learn more about their game access offer can read the announcement on the debian-devel-announce list."


Now this is pretty neat stuff, actually.

Valve invented Steam, which is a distribution plan for software that provides a 75% return to the writers of the software (Valve and all the others split up the remaining 25% for providing the distribution structure, massive server farms, etc.)    Steam has moderate prices on new stuff, ranging down to cheap and free as time goes along and the games become non-current.

Steam also distributes the FOSS games right along with the cheapie indie bundle  games and the more expensive big title games.

This is an amazing rate of return for the programmers as before in the MS world they were lucky to hit 25-30% as their share on programs that they had created.   And Steam has this neat trick about constantly putting games on sale for half or 75% off, as they get a little older and are replaced by the next game in the series.

Steam is now based on Linux, and the mother of most all Linux distros is Debian.

You scratch the paint on Ubuntu or Gentoo or Mint and you find Debian is the sheet metal holding it all together under all the pretty plastic.

So, Debian is where it all starts.  And Steam was finding they didn't speak FOSS well enough to communicate with the Debian programmers (the Debian Key Ring guys) and their vision of things was getting no traction with them.  So they went to Collabora, the FOSS smoothers of the way for some suggestions on how to get this to actually work out.

Collabora looked at the root issues and talked to the other half of their brains (some Collabora guys ARE Debian key-ringers after all).

Steam uses DRM and all the other stuff that FOSS guys hate and the real FOSS guys haven't been really on board helping Steam to take over the world.   This isn't going to change with the current war over FOSS vs DRM that is currently going on because the WWI style trenches have been drawn over that one already and them trenches are already fully populated on all three sides of the issue and them bullets are jest a flying hot and heavy.

Commericalists, pragmatists and purists, same story everywhere.

Pragmatists have day jobs as programmers and they do Debian on their fun time.   Purists live off of the government dole in Scandinavian countries and live their Debian all the time, 100%.   Commercialists work for somebody like Fedora or Ubuntu who intends to make a small buck out of what they do.

So, Collabora says to all these boys -- Hey, if you really don't like DRM figure out something that you do like better that says the programmers who work to build something can make a moderate non-greedy return off of it or else you can figure out how to get it covered under the dole in a Scandinavian country.

      (jest kidding)

They also say that Direct X sucks and we need a free FOSS standard to write this stuff to that works better than Direct X ever did.

And these guys at Valve/Steam and Ubuntu want to back your play.   They can get all the video card guys to finally give up the driver code for their cards and make sure they play nice on out into the future.

And here is their earnest that they really mean it, for your eyes only they are choking over all the code of all the games so you can see what is hooked to what and how the wizzbangs actuate the thingamabobs.  

Past games, current games and all future games.    Games should be FOSS based (with some mechanism of moderate return for the writers of the game during the time it is a hot property, which is only  a year or so).   Then like old classic songs, a trickle should come back over the years if the game stays active that long.

So, what do you think, key-ringers?    You always said you could do it better than MS ever did, so here is your chance -- just go do it.

And the key ringers said "Hmmmm,  if we got everybody to do it like this, then they couldn't get all greedy, plus if we had the Linux kernel handle the DRM implementation then we would control how obnoxious it would be --- and MS couldn't control any of it (they would be sidelined forever).  

Plus, the new improved Open GL could get tied directly to the Linaro store so ARM and the others could actually use the real McCoy in designing the GPU cores from the get go --- wouldn't be no drivers needed.   VR graphics would then hit the sidelines as well (NVIDIA seems to be cooperating now instead of being assholes all the time so they get a probationary pass for now)."

                                                           

So the FOSS boys actually might get a shot at running the show their way, providing that the purists and the pragmatists can actually learn how to talk to the commercialists.

Because, you see, them FOSS guys like to play games too.   And Steam and Debian own both ends of the rope, so they should be able to tie it all together.


Do you speak FOSS ???    Here is a short example for you to work on.

"Hi all,

At $dayjob for Collabora, we've been working with Valve on SteamOS,
which is based on Debian. Valve are keen to contribute back to the
community, and I'm discussing a couple of ways that they may be able to
do that [0].

Immediately though, they've offered a free subscription to any Debian
Developer which provides access to all past and future Valve produced
games [1]!

If you're interested, and a DD, simply mail jo.shields@collabora.co.uk
with a mail signed by a key in the Debian keyring, and he'll send you
back a redemption code to add in Steam. If you haven't heared from him
in a couple of days, you can also prod me at neil.mcgovern@collabora.com
as he may happen to be on holiday that week.

Happy gaming,
Neil

[0] If anyone has any specific ideas, drop me a mail
[1] List at http://deb.li/91yz, but excluding Steam Greenlight."

Aha, you just think you aren't a Debian user .....

Debian is tucked tightly into the guts of every car display, DVR, router, printer, TV, and other touch screen type electronic device on the planet.

All linuxes, unixs and almost every commercial OS has some FreeBSD or Debian tucked into a corner or two here and there.   Down at the roots of it all, generally.

Steam and Steam OS is going to have to prove to the FOSS guys they are real community contributors, and they will seek membership in the standards community where real, long lasting open source gaming standards will be eventually be achieved.  

Steam won't be able to dictate, they will corroborate and expand.   If the Debian key ringers have a real hand in it, then the results flow out naturally into all Linux distros ('cept the Slackware and Fedora branches, but they can pick it up if it looks good to them).

And the good Lord knows, DRM needs fixing, too, while they are about it.


==================


What will tend to stop this from happening is the portions where the control of open source areas falls under the leadership of a Stallman type idealogical radical.



Stallman and his brothers have been moved to the side from controlling any chunks of mainstream Linux because they cannot cooperate with anybody, it seems.

In contrast, Linus Torvalds keeps a tract that making money isn't evil (he kept a day job himself).   Making money is necessary to raise children, after all.   Getting greedy is bad though, and should be discouraged.   Torvalds thinks DRM needs to go into the kernel, so it can be updated, distributed and controlled just like any other key element of a modern OS.

The worst radical voice in Linux is an old American Berkley hippy, and the most reasonable voice in Linux is a REAL BLUNT SPEAKING socialist/communistic Norwegian.



Go figure.