You seem to have trouble understanding the fact that people can buy things and share them with those who can’t.

I’ve already given you an example of the game Mindustry, which people buy on Steam (16k reviews): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1127400/Mindustry, even though it’s released under a free software license and you can get it for free on Itch: https://anuke.itch.io/mindustry and you can get its source code on GitHub: https://github.com/Anuken/Mindustry.

The only reason why the industry is surviving is because most people understand that they need to pay for the entertainment they consume.

Weird, huh? For some reason the internet and Bittorrent hasn’t changed that.

They never hacked your computer, you agreed to everything. So what’s the problem then? It’s just a file that can be shared.

A lot of people don’t have a problem with that. I do, which is why I don’t use proprietary software. If I took a photo of myself (or of anything else) and posted it publicly on social media, I would do it under a free license, so that people could share it. I do that with software that I make. But that doesn’t mean I want to share everything - there are many things I want to keep private, so I will not post them publicly. There is no contradiction here.

I’m not talking only about you. I’m talking about how senseless the “I can share files with anyone” is. If that were true, companies could really fuck their customers, but thankfully it isn’t logical, thus it is illegal.

I’m pretty sure companies already legally sell user data, though? Laws don’t define what is logical or what is moral.

Imagine if a single person could buy a movie and then place it in their Facebook to share with their friends. And then their friends share with their friends. And so on… because it’s just a file, nobody is stealing, copying information isn’t stealing! … Who would make a movie under those conditions?

People already share movies online and it’s very easy. You don’t have to pay for any digital file ever, but people choose to do it anyway. Copying files is not stealing, because it’s not a physical object - you can make an infinite amount of copies at no cost.

If you want to own the movie, you need to buy a real copy. If you are buying a digital copy, you do not own the movie. There is already a solution for your problem, real copies.

Movies sold on DVD and Blu-ray contain DRM. You can’t make copies (even for personal use) without breaking the DRM, which is illegal. If there was no DRM, you could at least make copies for personal use, which would be an improvement, but you still wouldn’t own the files.

So sure, if you want a bunch of industries to die, keep believing and convincing others of that.

Copying and sharing files only keeps getting easier and those industries haven’t died. People even sell things like games and books under a free license. One such game is Mindustry - I bought a copy myself and I can legally share it with anyone. This game is even available for free on some platforms, but people buy it anyway.

The only reason you can watch your pirated movie is the fact that other people actually pay for the content. So you’re really stealing from people who now have to pay more to access the content.

You can’t steal something that’s infinite. I would pay for the movies though (even if they aren’t released under a free license) if there was a way to buy them without DRM. But there isn’t and I’m not going to support unethical practices with my money.

There could be a website where you would be able to buy DRM-free movies and you could download them. We have such stores for music, books and games. But the movie studios are greedy, so they choose to abuse people with DRM.

Remember Kim Dotcom? He had a file sharing website and the police raided his house with guns like he was a dangerous criminal. There is a video of it on YouTube.

Only if it’s a file that’s already publicly available. When you buy a movie, why shouldn’t you be able to share it with others? I’m not saying that you should be able to hack a filmmaker’s computer and publish movies they’ve never released, though.

The scenario you described can’t happen to me anyway, because I only use Free Software. You can learn more about it here: https://piped.video/watch?v=Ag1AKIl_2GM

They shouldn’t collect data in the first place.

I think it’s easier for a person to say “piracy is bad” than “sharing files is bad”. Because why would sharing be wrong? But if you give it a bad name, a lot of people will automatically assume that it is something bad. It’s a simple trick, but it works. If we want to change the way people think about copyright, we shouldn’t let anyone imply that sharing information is the same as stealing ships and murdering people on them.

“Piracy” is a propaganda term. We shouldn’t use it. There is nothing wrong with sharing files.

Awesome photo!

Introduce him to game development with Godot engine. I don’t know any specific tutorials, but you should be able to find something on YouTube.

You can also introduce him to the Free Software movement: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM

Check the Historical section.

Those distros are just not being developed anymore, so they are no longer recommended.

Why do you bash Valve but not any other company like Apple, Nvidia etc?

I do. I will never buy anything from those companies.

The distros being removed from this list mostly by requests from maintainers means it’s not actively monitored or researched at all. So by not verifying it you put yourself on a mercy of other people. It will fail, if not already.

What are you talking about? It’s a list made by the Free Software Foundation. What was removed? If some information is incorrect, you should be able to prove it.

That’s because you have to use consoles to even read them. They contain hardware DRM and are far from being ethical.

I don’t know what hardware DRM means, but they use proprietary software, so you are right that they are unethical. I never said they were.

Am I missing something or you’re thinking that starting with least offenders is a good idea?

I don’t know what you mean.

You do. But hey you end up with DRM free games you like so much.

But to get there I have to use unethical proprietary software that I hate so much.

By the way why so you even want games? Aren’t most of them unethical?

Who said I do?

Gog offline installers are also unethical, no?

Of course. This is why itch.io is better than gog.

That’s great! It’s still a bit disappointing that so many people decided to stay on Reddit, though. They made a big protest just for everything to go back to normal.

Is Boost proprietary? Because then it’s a good thing that you switched.

They work for people whose priority is freedom and that are GNU/Linux experts. So I don’t think it’s productive to make general statements like that. If there is something that sucks (like battery life), you should say what it is exactly.

99% users won’t ever need that. For cases when they do, they can find guides, modify settings or install software that does what they want.

You could make the same excuse for Windows.

Any distro you download can do this exact thing and you wouldn’t know for a long period, unless you spend enough time to compile the whole thing yourself, compare and research.

You don’t have to compile to know this. You can find the list of fully free distros here: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html . Debian removes those blobs too, but it’s not on that list for other reasons.

I consider myself knowledgeable but you surely chose a wrong example to teach people about DRM. Try some denuvo or eac maybe.

That’s DRM too and there are many more examples. Blu-ray also contains DRM. And so do most PC games thanks to Valve. Console games on the other hand usually don’t have DRM when you buy a physical copy.

Whatever that means, users don’t care about it. Compared to others, Valve provides a lot more value in most of their solutions. They are hackable just enough to satisfy most enthusiasts.

I know that most people don’t care about their freedom, privacy or security. Most people use Windows. But this doesn’t stop us from trying to build a better world for ourselves and to try to convince others to care.

Some games on Steam are DRM-free and you can play them without running Steam. That is good, but you still need the proprietary Steam client to download them and Steam doesn’t tell you which games have DRM before you buy them. gog.com and itch.io prove that this can be done better.

That doesn’t mean you can’t control how it works. Most people don’t need sources of their Linux distros to use them as they want.

You can’t easily make changes to a program without the source code or even check what it does. Most people are not programmers, so others study the code and make the necessary changes for them.

It would be cool to have the source, but you wouldn’t expect them to have an official maintained repo since they spend much more resources on actual hardware that needs this distro.

This is not an excuse. What they are doing is unethical. They put themselves in a position of power over their users. Not much different from Microsoft or Apple.

Yeah it seems to also be the only thing that is proprietary in SteamOS too.

I don’t know if that’s true. But the Linux kernel is proprietary as well (just like the one in Arch) - it contains binary blobs without the source code.

Are you clueless or what? There are too many ways to do what you want with SteamOS. You can use offline mode, desktop mode, play pirated games in any mode, install any controller software you like.

I was explaining to you how DRM works and why it’s wrong, since apparently you have no idea. I don’t know why you are listing features that any popular desktop operating system has (even Windows). SteamOS is still proprietary, which makes it unethical.

Finally, install another Linux distro on it, or Windows. But people buy Deck because of SteamOS mostly since it creates the intended (and expected) experience.

If you buy a Windows laptop, you can install any operating system on it too. That doesn’t make Windows ethical.

They are DRM-free. I can send you a copy of those games and you can run them on your computer. Without you having to log in anywhere or install an additional proprietary application. Without anyone verifying anything. Isn’t that amazing?

Can you explain what parts of SteamOS are not controllable in a way that makes it more restricted than Arch, which it is based on?

Valve won’t release the source code and I don’t use it, so it’s hard for me to tell which packages are proprietary and which are not. Steam client for sure is proprietary and it comes with the OS. Arch by default is Free Software (other than proprietary blobs in the kernel) and you can audit what each program does and modify it. With SteamOS you can’t do that, because Valve keeps secrets from you on your own device.

[If the account owns the game - allow user to download and run the game] is a DRM sure… But it’s kind of fair, no?

To play any game you have to install and run the proprietary Steam client and be logged in to an account. Even to play singleplayer games. Even if you bought a physical disc. There are stores that don’t do this: gog.com and itch.io. They provide an optional client for convenience, but you can just download a game’s installer from the website and install it on any PC any time you want. In case of Itch the client is Free Software so anyone can see what it does and modify it.