Open source Steam and games

[7ppy]

Hello, can we please have open-source Steam client and after that a section fully open-source games?
The linux market is expanding, and I'm in it too

Edit

I've read https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading/distributing_opensource
and my I'm even more confident in my question and potential success of this

[Stalker2010]

This is funny.

[potato]

no

[7ppy]

How is this funny?

[Ben Lubar]

You actually can't put a game on Steam if it's under certain open source licenses like the GPL. If your game is GPL, you have to license it to Valve under a different license in order to put it on Steam, because the GPL puts restrictions on the distributor of a program.

[7ppy]

How does GPL put restrictions on a program?
There are programs like GIMP and Blender that are on Windows store and cost money (the official source of product is free)

[Gwarsbane]

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥♥:

Hello, can we please have open-source Steam client and after that a section fully open-source games?
The linux market is expanding, and I'm in it too

Open source games are not going to happen on Steam for the reasons mentioned by Ben Lubar. If you are a developer you can provide the source code of the game yourself, I have seen that for a couple of games, but for the most part developers don't and won't do this.

As for open source Steam itself, again never going to happen just because of security concerns.

[Ben Lubar]

There's a pretty good explanation here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading/distributing_opensource

[7ppy]

Ben, that's a good read and quoting

"This can happen if the author of the code that is GPL-licensed has given the permission to do so. The author can of course always (a) decide to grant Valve a different license than the author grants everyone else or (b) decide that what the Steamworks SDK does is just a communication with a service that does not invoke the copyleft requirement of the GPL."

This kindof disproving what you said so there's that lol.
I mostly meant developers who make open-source games to put them on Steam, not some random dude but I guess a random dude could if a) or b) are met, and I'm not sure what b) exactly implies but it looks like that could include a lot of games, don't you think so?

I'm not a developer and have no idea where Steam code needs to be and how it intervenes with the game code

[7ppy]

And quoting
"If in doubt, consult a lawyer, or ask the author whose open source code you plan to use."

I bet that most open-source developers are pretty chill and would grant it anyways, I don't think that everyone reads all the license information especially GPL one, and 1% of those that do read it most don't understand it because they aren't lawyer XD

[7ppy]

Why doesn't html formatting work?

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥♥:

Why doesn't html formatting work?

https://steamcommunity.com/comment/Recommendation/formattinghelp

[nullable]

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥♥:

Hello, can we please have open-source Steam client and after that a section fully open-source games?
The linux market is expanding, and I'm in it too

<h2> Edit </h2>
I've read https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading/distributing_opensource
and my I'm even more confident in my question and potential success of this

Valve is aware of Open Source. This is one of those things where if they want to do it, they will. And if they don't, they won't. They're not waiting on users to ask for it.

[Ben Lubar]

Yes, there are partially open source games on Steam. Some of them are even made by Valve. That's how every Source Engine game including mine got started.

https://github.com/ReactiveDrop/reactivedrop_public_src?tab=readme-ov-file#license

But there are no fully open source games on Steam that use any of Steam's features because the Steamworks SDK is not open source. And as much as Valve wants to open source Source Engine, they can't because it also uses components that are not open source that they have access to under an NDA.

There are many reasons why it can be hard to open source something that wasn't originally open source. Often, even aside from security issues, there are factors the developers have no control over that prevent them from sharing their code.

[7ppy]

thanks hotsauce I did < instead of [

[7ppy]

What security issues?