I get that proprietary software and DRM is a general problem, and Steam is part of that problem, but completely getting rid of that is simply a battle for another time, further in the future. The first battle is to get Windows users abandon their Microsoft/Apple cages, and that’s a win that’s actually within reach now.

The free software movement was started 40 years ago. We can’t just give up now. How many years should we wait? People are only becoming more dependent on computers and our problems keep getting worse. Windows users have been able to abandon it many years ago, but they don’t care about freedom.

Windows also becomes worse by itself, further accelerating the change.

I had the same feeling about 10 years ago, but users of proprietary software are willing to take a lot of abuse. It’s almost impressive how stubborn they are. This includes users of Reddit, Twitter, Apple and others. I don’t think Microsoft will lose any significant amount of users just by abusing them more, and when it comes to features, Windows is improving lately.

That’s important, because running a proprietary OS is still much worse than running some proprietary applications or games on a free OS. A closed OS completely shifts control away from the user, leaving only what the developer allows you to do, and it allows the dev to always push his or her agenda by favoring applications from the same developer, and allowing the developer to establish proprietary APIs and libraries like DirectX which was problematic for the competition for quite some time.

I agree that more freedom is better, but if people don’t understand the end goal, they will keep making the same mistakes. SteamOS is proprietary. Most of the popular GNU/Linux distros have proprietary software in their repositories. On mobile I see people switching from proprietary Android to proprietary Sailfish OS. They just keep falling in the same traps over and over again. Steam is one of those traps. If GNU/Linux became mainstream on desktop today, I have no doubt that it would be a proprietary distro. Then it will be only a matter of time before it turns into something even more proprietary like Windows. Because why wouldn’t it?

A regular user does not understand the ethics behind closed and open source and will never choose a worse free option over a better proprietary one. That either means the free options must become true rivals, or - which is the easier goal for now - the proprietary apps have to run on Linux just as well as people are used to.

That’s why we must explain it to them. Some will listen and others will not, but there is nothing else we can do. We are doing our best to rival the proprietary apps, but it’s a battle we’ve been fighting for 40 years. There will always be something missing and even if there isn’t, it will always be inconvenient to switch from something you already know. Reddit users could switch to Lemmy, but they won’t. If at some point they decide to switch to some other proprietary alternative, that will not fix their problem. It will be only a matter of time before the other company or developer starts abusing them too.

A “war” isn’t being won all at once instantly, but by winning several smaller battles after one another. Which takes time.

I know, but if we make compromises on our freedom, we will never keep it. The companies that make proprietary software will not let us. They could make money from developing libre software instead, but they don’t have to, because our society thinks non free software is fine.