Open Source the Steam Chat Client

[TremorPV]

Development would probably go faster with more people working on it, with Valve controlling what actualy makes it into the updates.

[WolfEisberg]

MrL0G1C の投稿を引用：

Brujeira の投稿を引用：

Which is an integrated part of the main client and therefore has access to its memory space.

Unless it's a separate executable.

It isnt.

[TremorPV]

Eisberg の投稿を引用：

It isnt.

Steam has a lot of executables on Windows for example. One for handling error reporting. One for the overlay itself. Monitoring, Desktop Capture, etc etc. All of these are separate executables.

I'd imagine if Steam Chat were open source, it would be a separate exectuable like all the other functions which are already separate.

Regarding the "multiple clients" thing, https://electronjs.org/apps/punk

People already produce separate Steam Clients as alternatives to the main one. My point being that it's pointless to bring that up as an issue when it's already happening.

Here's another open source project that integrates with Steam. https://www.npmjs.com/package/steam-user

I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather have Valve be curating open source development of the Steam platform.

[Brujeira]

TremorPV の投稿を引用：

Eisberg の投稿を引用：

It isnt.

Steam has a lot of executables on Windows for example. One for handling error reporting. One for the overlay itself. Monitoring, Desktop Capture, etc etc. All of these are separate executables.

I'd imagine if Steam Chat were open source, it would be a separate exectuable like all the other functions which are already separate.

Regarding the "multiple clients" thing, https://electronjs.org/apps/punk

People already produce separate Steam Clients as alternatives to the main one. My point being that it's pointless to bring that up as an issue when it's already happening.

Here's another open source project that integrates with Steam. https://www.npmjs.com/package/steam-user

I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather have Valve be curating open source development of the Steam platform.

You stated that Heartbleed was a success story for open source. Your argument is invalid.

Seriously, cut the sales pitches. The main reason you're so hot on open source is that you can't figure out any other way of getting the chat client back to a state that you found acceptable. The thing is that it's not all about you. If you can't convince us then you're going to have a hell of a time convincing Valve to buy into this idea.

Want to build support for this scheme? Find a Reddit group for Steam and pitch it to them, see what they say. Do be sure to come back and post a link to it so we can see how you went on.

[aiusepsi]

Oh man, there are so many bad opinions in this thread, and it makes me incredibly sad.

First off: hey, turns out, because the new Chat system is implemented in HTML+CSS+JS, the code which makes it all work is already out there on the Internet!

https://steamcommunity.com/public/javascript/webui/friends.js
https://steamcommunity.com/public/javascript/webui/chathelpers.js
https://steamcommunity.com/public/javascript/webui/clientcom.js

This doesn't mean that it's open source (for one thing, it seems to be compiled from another language into Javascript because a bunch of the variables have super short one or two character names) but if you're worried about just having the code be available be a bad thing, then, well... too late.

Another way it is too late: the aforementioned HTML+CSS+JS code runs on Chromium, which is... an open source project.

Also, you are wrong to think that something being open source is bad for security. There is a general principle in the cryptography / security community, called Kerckhoffs's principle or Shannon's maxim, which is: "a cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge" or "the enemy knows the system" or "one ought to design systems under the assumption that the enemy will immediately gain full familiarity with them".

The security of a system is never, and should never, be premised on the idea that how the system works is unknown. Indeed, in the cryptography community this is taken to the extent that any cryptographic algorithm not open to inspection is considered unsafe.

Being open source doesn't automatically make you more secure either, but neither does it inherently reduce security.

Just making software open source doesn't mean that it has to accept patches from any random Tom, Richard, or Harry, and include them in the official Steam distribution without vetting them first. This would be insanity. Nobody does that.

Having the new Steam chat UI be properly open-sourced wouldn't be some massive watershed moment which would lead to an invasion of spambots. The Steam network protocol was reverse-engineered by massive nerds with too much time on their hands years ago. The horse is already long bolted.

There is so much bad info in this thread it is really tricky to refute all of it, and it makes me sad.

Eisberg の投稿を引用：

MrL0G1C の投稿を引用：

Unless it's a separate executable.

It isnt.

It is. The Chat UI is run inside one of the Steam Web Helpers, not steam.exe.

[aiusepsi]

Brujeira の投稿を引用：

You stated that Heartbleed was a success story for open source. Your argument is invalid.

Heartbleed is a mixed bag. "Success" isn't the word I would use; it did uncover one very big issue, which is a sort of tragedy of the commons; an awful lot of people were (and are!) heavily relying on OpenSSL without contributing money or manpower to developing it. That's certainly a possible failure mode of that sort of project.

On the other hand: if you think that there isn't a lot of closed source software out there which have vulnerabilities which are equally as bad, I have a bridge to sell you. Just being closed source doesn't make you immune. Like the time that someone discovered that the Steam client's cryptography was broken: https://steamdb.info/blog/breaking-steam-client-cryptography/

That didn't need the source code to find.

If you can't convince us then you're going to have a hell of a time convincing Valve to buy into this idea.

Honestly, I'd reckon Valve would be a little more enlightened on the matter. I can't see any particular competitive need for them to keep this code closed source, so there are really only benefits in opening it up. A bit like with Steam Networking Sockets (which is a part of the networking system for Dota 2 and CS:GO)

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets

[Spawn of Totoro]

Insults get threads locked.