Technology

59429 readers

2543 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

883

Arch Linux and Valve Collaboration (lists.archlinux.org)

submitted 1 month ago by Aatube@kbin.melroy.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

218 comments fedilink hide all child comments

We are excited to announce that Arch Linux is entering into a direct collaboration with Valve. Valve is generously providing backing for two critical projects that will have a huge impact on our distribution: a build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave. By supporting work on a freelance basis for these topics, Valve enables us to work on them without being limited solely by the free time of our volunteers.

This opportunity allows us to address some of the biggest outstanding challenges we have been facing for a while. The collaboration will speed-up the progress that would otherwise take much longer for us to achieve, and will ultimately unblock us from finally pursuing some of our planned endeavors. We are incredibly grateful for Valve to make this possible and for their explicit commitment to help and support Arch Linux.

These projects will follow our usual development and consensus-building workflows. [RFCs] will be created for any wide-ranging changes. Discussions on this mailing list as well as issue, milestone and epic planning in our GitLab will provide transparency and insight into the work. We believe this collaboration will greatly benefit Arch Linux, and are looking forward to share further development on this mailing list as work progresses.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ggppjj@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If we're talking about Digital Rights Management, steam is acting in that role to manage your digital rights on the steam platform. They could allow you to download games without requiring an account login or client download, and they instead do not. They could allow you to download free games from the client or the website without requiring a login, and they do not.

GOG's website is also DRM for the same reason. It won't allow you to download games that aren't licensed digitally to your account, including free games. GOG has DRM-free games and installers fairly universally beyond that first check, and that means you can download them from alternative sources, but downloading from GOG 100% requires interacting with DRM.

To be direct: I don't care that Steam is DRM because it's minimally invasive and I currently trust Valve enough to use an operating system made by them as a daily driver. There are very few companies I'd say that about.

The Steam client is DRM at its core, even if it's acceptable DRM. I think it's important not to allow your thinking to shift from the reality that it is DRM just because it's personally acceptable.

I don't mind it, I will simp for Valve all day long, and if a company requires you to log in to an account with their server to check whether your account has the digital entitlement to then allow you to access a file or not, that's digital rights management.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

When people say "DRM," they almost always mean the check when the game launches, not the one-time license check when you download a game. Whether they use their Steam platform or a webpage, I honestly don't see much of a difference, provided you end up with a DRM-free product at the end.

But yes, technically Valve is verifying that you own the game, but it's not really what is meant when the average person says "DRM."