• 0 Posts
  • 7 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 15th, 2023

help-circle

  • I have my own backup of the git repo and I downloaded this to compare and make sure it’s not some modified (potentially malicious) copy. The most recent commit on my copy of master was dc94882c9062ab88d3d5de35dcb8731111baaea2 (4 commits behind OP’s copy). I can verify:

    • that the history up to that commit is identical in both copies
    • after that commit, OP’s copy only has changes to translation files which are functionally insignificant

    So this does look to be a legitimate copy of the source code as it appeared on github!

    Clarifications:

    • This was just a random check, I do not have any reason to be suspicious of OP personally
    • I did not check branches other than master (yet?)
    • I did not (and cannot) check the validity of anything beyond the git repo
    • You don’t have a reason to trust me more than you trust OP… It would be nice if more people independently checked and verified against their own copies.

    I will be seeding this for the foreseeable future.




  • This is great. Proton is getting a lot of testing just based on Steam’s userbase and it is backed by Valve. We also have a lot of data on proton’s performance and potential game-specific fixes in the form of protondb. Making sure that non-Steam launchers can use all that work and information is crucial to guaranteeing the long-term health of linux gaming. Otherwise it is easy to imagine a future where proton is doing great but the other launchers are keep running into problems and are eventually abandoned.

    One thing that I am curious is how this handles the AppId. If this AppId is used to figure out which game-specific fixes are needed, then it will have to be known. Do we have a tool/database that figures out the AppId from the game you are launching outside of Steam?



  • You can argue that “open source” can mean other things that what the OSI defined it to mean, but the truth of the matter is that almost everyone thinks of the OSI or similar definition when they talk about “open source”. Insisting on using the term this way is deliberately misleading. Even your own links don’t support your argument.

    A bit further down in the Wikipedia page is this:

    Main article: Open-source software

    Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use for any (including commercial) purpose, or modification from its original design.

    And if you go to the main article, it is apparent that the OSI definition is treated as the de fact definition of open source. I’m not going to quote everything, but here are examples of this:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software#Definitions
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software#Open-source_versus_source-available

    And from Red Hat, literally the first sentence

    Open source is a term that originally referred to open source software (OSS). Open source software is code that is designed to be publicly accessible—anyone can see, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit.

    What makes software open source?

    And if we follow that link:

    In actuality, neither free software nor open source software denote anything about cost—both kinds of software can be legally sold or given away.

    But the Red Hat page is a bad source anyway because it is written like a short intro and not a formal definition of the concept. Taking a random sentence from it and arguing that it doesn’t mention distribution makes no sense.

    Here is a more comprehensive page from Red Hat, that clearly states that they evaluate whether a license is open source based on OSI and the FSF definitions.