“but they could (as many companies do) keep the improvements all for themselves” I don’t know, by the license of what they use they are obliged to share the source code, if only with their clients. I’m not a legal expert, but from what I understand they couldn’t create a closed version of SteamOS.
In any case, there is a mutual interest in the project, valve contributes a lot to wine, but I don’t think they would be able to maintain a project of this complexity on their own, let alone get to where they are today.
They couldn’t legally create a closed source SteamOS, but they also aren’t required to “upstream everything”.
I’m not a legal expert of any kind, but AFAIU they are only legally required to send you the changes they made to the source code on request (with GPLv3).
Though I disagree that this is Valve being nice, IMO doing this makes sense for most companies working in this space, as their code being accepted upstream means they benefit from anything the community has built up around the project, and they don’t have to play catchup with upstream.
“but they could (as many companies do) keep the improvements all for themselves” I don’t know, by the license of what they use they are obliged to share the source code, if only with their clients. I’m not a legal expert, but from what I understand they couldn’t create a closed version of SteamOS. In any case, there is a mutual interest in the project, valve contributes a lot to wine, but I don’t think they would be able to maintain a project of this complexity on their own, let alone get to where they are today.
They couldn’t legally create a closed source SteamOS, but they also aren’t required to “upstream everything”.
I’m not a legal expert of any kind, but AFAIU they are only legally required to send you the changes they made to the source code on request (with GPLv3).
Though I disagree that this is Valve being nice, IMO doing this makes sense for most companies working in this space, as their code being accepted upstream means they benefit from anything the community has built up around the project, and they don’t have to play catchup with upstream.
They could have gone BSD and then done whatever they wanted.