GNU founder Stallman calls DRM’d Steam for Linux games "unethical"

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from arstechnica.com ......... RMS says Steam for Linux is better than Steam for Windows, but not by much.

Valve recently announced plans to bring its Steam game distribution service to the Linux platform. The company has also ported its Source game engine and the popular title Left 4 Dead 2. In a recent interview, Valve’s Gabe Newell said that the move was partly influenced by concerns about the increasingly closed nature of the Windows platform.

The Linux desktop has historically been ignored by major commercial software developers due to the relatively small audience and technical issues like fragmentation. Steam’s arrival on Linux has largely been welcomed by Linux enthusiasts who recognize it as a big step towards legitimizing the Linux desktop as a consumer platform.

But the prospect of the open source operating system attracting a rich ecosystem of proprietary DRM-encumbered computer games raises questions for some. Richard Stallman, the founder of GNU and the Free Software foundation, has issued a statement outlining what he views as the positive and negative consequences of this development.

In his statement, he says that closed-source games are “unethical because they deny freedom to their users.” But he also believes that users are “better off” running them on an open Linux-based platform rather than Windows.

“This development can do both harm and good. It might encourage GNU/Linux users to install these games, and it might encourage users of the games to replace Windows with GNU/Linux,” he wrote. “My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm. But there is also an indirect effect: what does the use of these games teach people in our community?”

He remains concerned that the availability of commercial games will detract from the message of freedom that is advanced by GNU and the free software movement. Success, he says, is not about popularity—it’s about freeing users from the kind of technical restrictions that DRM represents.

He concluded by encouraging software freedom advocates to support efforts like the Liberated Pixel Cup, a contest for creating open source games with open artwork.