Valve Offers Free Subscription To Debian Developers: Paying It Forward 205
sfcrazy writes "Valve Software, the makers of Steam OS, is already winning praise from the larger free and open source community – mainly because of their pro-community approach. Now the company is 'giving back' to Debian by offering free subscription to Debian developers. This subscription will offer full access to current and future games produced by Valve. Since Steam OS is based on Debian GNU/Linux it's a nice way for Valve to say 'thank you' to Debian developers."
Re:Now all we need is rolling release (Score:5, Informative)
Debian unstable is the rolling release. Debian testing is a slightly more conservative rolling release, with updates screened mostly automatically. Stable is for people who want a manually "release-managed" approach with multi-year support lifetime.
Broken Link (Score:0, Informative)
Drop the v at the end of the link...
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/01/msg00006.htmlv [debian.org]
Typo in list.debian.org link (Score:5, Informative)
There is a extra 'v' in the link. The real link is https://lists.debian.org/debia... [debian.org]
Re:"Rewarding" free software with non-free softwar (Score:5, Informative)
Cough cough: http://linux.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Re:Developer approval (Score:2, Informative)
which begs the question: Who is considered a developer?
1. Raises. 2. The page I linked answers your question. It appears that first you must get on an airplane and meet an existing Debian developer in person to get your key signed.
Re:Developer approval (Score:5, Informative)
which begs the question: Who is considered a developer?
Debian Developer is a well defined status with full upload rights and voting rights. The application process is also documented but well basically it consists of
1: get your key signed by a couple of existing debian developers (in a pinch one debian developer and one
2: find an existing dd to advocate for you
3: make your application
4: wait to be assigned an application manager
5: go through a questioning/testing process with the application manager
6: wait for final approval, account creations etc from front desk, DAM and keyring maint
Nowadays it's generally reccomended to go for the lower status of "Debian Maintainer" (restricted upload rights, no voting rights) first and then move on to applying for Debian Developer (I went straight to DD myself so it IS still possible to go directly in the right circumstances but it's not considered the normal route anymore).
The process of becoming a Debian Developer can take quite some time both in terms of overall process length and the ammount you will have to learn about debian and the contributions you will have to demonstrate you have made to pass it. If you are serious about contributing to Debian then it's worth it, if you are just doing it for the handful of goodies (the ones i'm aware of are lwn subscription, ghandi.net hosting discount, and now valve games) that are given out debian developers then you are wasting your time.
Re:OK... (Score:4, Informative)
Except Debian tends to be one of the more Free distributions out there - turning down a LOT of stuff.
In fact, it's why Ubuntu was created - Debian is a great distribution with very powerful open and free beliefs. Even when they get in the way of users. Ubuntu forked Debian, trying to apply a more "user-centric" view by adding appropriate non-free stuff to create something that users expect - including stuff like non-free codecs and such that users expect, and Debian lacks on purpose.
Hell, the non-free repos are barely tolerated.
Re:OK... (Score:5, Informative)
I'll just add that Debian split the non-free stuff into a separate repository, not enabled by default. Not only are you free not to install non-free software, you get an easy way of making sure that non-free doesn't creep in by mistake.
Shachar