I love how Valve is going way more than the extra mile to bring a very successful game store to Linux, and here we're just complaining about the DRM.

I don't think we're "just" complaining about the DRM, but it's something worth talking about. Do you suggest we all placate Valve, write them great big love letters, and ignore all their faults? It's worth exploring the full range of consequences, positive and negative.

I think it's established that gamers will be appreciative to have Steam running on Linux officially. Do you think we owe Valve something more than that, like pretending like potential downsides don't exist and that everyone's problems will be solved permanently by drooling at the Steam/Linux window for ten hours a day?

I suppose there's a risk that Steam becomes the defacto way to ship software for Linux which would in effect just assimilate it into being a closed platform.

OTOH that seems unlikely, hopefully it will be more like OSX with a healthy commercial ecosystem and an open source system living side by side on the same OS.

The problem is, that if it aspires to be a generic channel for distributing software besides games, the DRM side if it is bad enough to be concerned, even if it won't replace other open channels.

I'm not sure if it is bad in and of itself. As long as you are free to not install it and stick with your normal apt repos to get your DRM free open source stuff.

I guess it could become a disadvantage if an influx of good commercial software means that effort on open source stuff is diminished because there is less perceived need.

It's never enough for some people. If the DRM was gone there would be complaints about closed source.

While that may be true, the focus here is different. Whether the game is closed or open source is developers' decision, while using or not using DRM is the distributor's decision. So in this case the complaint is addressed to Valve as a distributor who promotes DRM. In contrast GOG as a distributor is against any DRM.

I really don't like DRM in general. Valve's move to Linux has its pluses, I'm not denying it. But DRM is a fat minus.

DRM in general is terrible, though. It adds no value at all for legitimate consumers, and in fact makes their experience far worse than it is for those that pirate your games (seriously mis-aligned incentives there!)

Steam is DRM, of course, and it definitely causes hassle for some users. Where Steam is different however is that it does actually add value, and for many users (myself included) the trade-off is worth it. I wouldn't dismiss software out of hand because "it's DRM" - there's a whole spectrum of good and bad software within that definition.

I'm not sure what you mean. How does DRM add any value to Steam? I.e. what would be worse there if it could drop DRM?

The way I see it - DRM never adds any value, and it's a two fold problem. The practical aspect of it - it degrades usability for legitimate users as you pointed out. And the ethical aspect of it - it's a preemptive policing technology that treats users as potential criminals by default. In my opinion it doesn't have any reason to exist at all. And actually you can dismiss it just for the fact of promoting DRM, since DRM means disrespect to users by default.

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean that the DRM in Steam adds value - but taking Steam as a whole, Steam itself is viewable as a DRM system that adds value (in all the ways that make Steam awesome).

The core DRM in Steam (if we ignore the flakiness of offline mode at least) is clever, consumer-friendly, and unbeatable: You simply do not deliver the executable to users until the game is out (but they can pre-load assets, which can optionally be encrypted to stop any pre-release leaks from them).

That's not to say Steam might be marginally improved without that, but in my day to day it has never caused any problems that wouldn't exist without it - in contrast, CD ROM based DRM such as Securom has caused me several headaches.

It's also worth mentioning that the DRM on Steam is opt-in: While the big publishers see fit to ship extra DRM on top of Steam, many of the games I have installed through Steam will actually run fine if I launch the executable directly, without starting Steam.

It sucks.

Lose internet unexpectedly? Your downloaded games are inaccessible.

Especially given how many games on GOG are old dos games that just run in DoxBOX and would be trivial to make bundled linux packages for...

I've had great success installing dos-based GOG games through WineBottler (http://wiki.winehq.org/WineBottler), diving into the package, moving the relevant files out, and stuffing them in Boxer (http://boxerapp.com/) and they run pretty awesome on my mac.

For GOG installers you can simply use innoextract to unpack all the files, to avoid using installer through Wine:

http://constexpr.org/innoextract/

The proposal above is really more about giving an option of native Linux games when they are available. Often GOG offers a Windows version, while Linux or Mac OSX variants aren't offered even if they exist.

Having a DosBox / ScummVM games packaged for Linux is good, but that's not the main point of that vote.

> would be trivial to make bundled linux packages for...

Boxer makes this especially trivial on OSX, there's no reason similar (or even the same) game containers could not be created for Linux.

"GOG.com will also be announcing that it is bringing best PC games from throughout history to a new operating system."

Source: http://en.thewitcher.com/community/entry/296 about a Special Event on the 18th of October

Though, that will probably be OS X.

May be. They said they are interested in feedback though. Request for supporting Linux already got 6000 votes. At some point I hope they'll start paying attention.