Given that Proton is open source, provides plenty of instructions and permits reproduction and distribution (BSD-3-Clause-Open-MPI), any other store could likewise include it or a fork of it. They may have a factual monopoly, but it’s not enforced legally in any way.

It’s just that nobody seems to compete meaningfully. Steam has a vested interest in being independent from Microsoft, maintaining their own SteamOS and making games run on it. Other companies just might not have the same commercial drive. And if there are easy to use 3rd party tools that people are content with, why would they bother investing in their own solution? They’re accessible to the Linux market through no work of their own.

Of course, there are some companies actively not wanting to work with Linux. Some just don’t trust the platform. Some require particular technology that might not work on Linux. For example, things like kernel-level-anticheat being confined to the wine environment defeats the point of spying on the whole OS. And some would require additional work to make it run smoothly, which obviously is an investment into a market they may feel doesn’t promise enough profit.

To relativise his wealth at least a little (not by much though, he’s still part of a fucked up system): Some of it will he due to his ownership of companies with a lot of assets. In case of Valve, that is at least preferable to public ownership and the attendant pressure to make more and more profit at any cost. Worker-owned would be better, but leaving that aside:

Companies have assets. Even without their profit expectations driving (speculative) stock prices, the office equipment all has some book value, and the value of a company is comprised in part by the sum of that value. If you have a company with, say, 200k in IT hardware, and you own 75% of it, that’s an asset value of 150k. Subtract, say, 25k in debts, and you’re left with 175k equity, of which you own 143k.

Valve supposedly has an equity of 10 Billion USD. Gabe owning over half of it puts him at 5 Billion just for owning that company. It’s not all “hoarded money”, or at least not directly. Liquidating it (e.g. to donate the money) would mean selling (parts of) Valve, and I dread to think just who would have the wealth and desire to buy, and what they would do with their controlling interest.

So the wealth itself is a result of the way capitalism treats equity and ownership, so that having the sovereignty to make business decisions require him to own more than half the company. If we concede that he’s less malicious than other billionaires, we’d still have to replace the underlying system, but I wouldn’t immediately group him with the rest of the actively greedy and exploitative lot.

Again, it would be better to have the workers share in that wealth. That would mean giving up his control and I’m not sure he’d be willing to do that. He’s not a saint. I just hope he never turns into a devil instead.

Nuance getting lost in the chorus of outrage… I wish lemmy was above that.

Investor irrationality fucking shit up for everyone since…

Actually, irrationality by people with influence has been an issue forever, I guess.

whatanoutism

I don’t think pointing out problematic aspects of LLM use is whataboutism, given that the maintainer’s LLM use is the topic of conversation. A whataboutism would be “But what about Microsoft? They use GenAI too!” because that has nothing to do with this specific developer using it.

This is simply about the reasons I disapprove of using GenAI in general and relying on LLMs for coding in particular.

If you think you can do better then fork it. But you can’t, and won’t.

There are a lot of things I can’t do myself. I don’t see how that should mean I can’t criticise the way they are done.

It also doesn’t mean people have to stop using it entirely. Approval is not a binary. This isn’t a company we’re paying money to, it’s not an atrocity, and it’s not particularly large in scale (which is why making a witch-hunt out of it is dumb too).

Read the rest of the comment. It’s not.

Opposing GenAI is free. Do it. It just consists of not using the software you don’t agree with.

That doesn’t mitigate the environmental damage caused by others using it. I’m not opposed to the technology, nor strictly to its application, but to the irresponsible wau it’s being handled currently.

Coordinating attacks on social media to harass a developer is not great

You’re right, I agree on that. Efforts should target the companies that offer it, rather than individuals.

It’s 4chan-like but at least the 4chan goblins know that they are the bad guys. This is just as slimy but with none of the self awareness.

I’m not sure the 4chan goblins actually believe they are bad guys so much as ironically embrace that image

Edit: To preface this, I concede that targeted harassment against individuals isn’t a good solution to the problems I have with the way the technology is being used.

Others mention that some recent versions appear to have been unusable. If this is due to LLM-generated code and the dev doubles down on using it, I’m not sure there’s too much value in them carrying on development and burying more artificially generated foot guns in there than human coding tends to have already.

That aside, the climate, economic and social problems of the GenAI boom are hardly unknown. For the dev to ignore that is… distasteful. If they won’t quit using LLMs without also quitting the project, Lutris might end up another regrettable victim of the AI-Slopalypse.

Opposing GenAI isn’t trying to hurt the Open Source movement, it’s trying to call out the false messiah that has deluded some people into believing it’s the future of software development.

Ah, the power of speculative currency

They failed to vet their contractors properly, which is kinda unfortunate, and take responsibility for that, which is decent, but to have the plug pulled over the backlash for what turns out to be a correctable mistake does feel a little unfair.

Empörung über den Feind

Alle Regeln der Moral, Vernunft oder Integrität sind dem Zwang, besser zu sein als “die anderen”, untertan. Es gibt keine Doppelmoral, wenn der erste Grundsatz “ich habe Recht” lautet. Es gibt keinen Widerspruch, wenn der Schluss die Prämissen vorgibt. Die Überlegenheit ist wie ein Band, das ein Bündel Ruten zusammenhält.

Erst wenn das Feindbild gebrochen ist und sich die Überlegenheit auflöst, kann auch dieses Bündel an Bullshit zerfallen.

My employer certainly is. You’d have to throw our about 80% of our infrastructure, including a bunch of shit that was built in-house, and good luck convincing management that all those development expenses are sunk cost.

Particularly mamagement of the rest of the company, whom IT had to do a lot of work to convince we’re more than just a cost to manage.

I know people (and was, once upon a time, one of them) that are really scared of accidentally breaking something. To them, being told “Don’t worry, the important bits are locked down anyway, so you couldn’t even break them” is a promise of safety. They might not strictly need it, but how would they know in advance?

(I did break things, eventually, and learned that I can fix them too, but I took a leap of faith that most users wouldn’t and probably shouldn’t dare)

At corporate scale, migrating to Linux is a non-starter right now. Our IT had to explain to people where the “windows button” had gone and how people could find all their apps. Support had to argue with a user who had a hardware issue, but didn’t want to get a new device because it would come with Win11. Last I heard, a board member still refuses to upgrade.

So yeah, MS has the corporate world by the balls. Smaller companies might have a better shot, but might have a harder time hiring someone willing to give Calc even just a chance when all their training and experience is with Excel.

I hope Linux can gain a larger foothold on the home user market, particularly among those who only really need the browser anyway. If Valve can convince gamers that it really isn’t that big of a leap, perhaps that’s the best place to pry open MS’ grip.

It’ll be a long way to go still, but at least it looks like there’s some movement.

However, if a corporation is acting in our favor, against a worse corporation, then I’m here for that, while it exists.

The enemy of my enemy might not be my friend, but they’re a welcome ally. Let them fight it out, I know who I’m cheering for in between mouthfuls of popcorn.