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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Gaming
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From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
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Lets take the imaginary program Y. It is free open source software with the GPLv3 license. If Valve wants to include Y in SteamOS, they are free to do so. Any time Valve makes changes or fixes to Y, they are legally required to provide the source code of their changes, as stated in the GPL license included with Y.
A lot of programs have this license (or a similar one), which forces corporations to contribute back to FOSS projects.
Some Valve-made components in SteamOS are truly "SteamOS only", but a good amount of fixes to non-Valve programs are submitted "upstream" (to the original project). Due to the nature of Linux, it might be possible to copy the few non-foss components in SteamOS and directly use them in another distro.
Alongside forced contributions due to licensing, Valve contributes a lot of code to "gaming" programs on Linux, such as Wine or DXVK. They also make some SteamOS components FOSS, including Gamescope for example. Valve is (currently) doing a lot of work "for the community" rather than for direct profit.
Mainly their creation of Proton, and contributions to DXVK and WINE have helped Linux gaming become possible on any distro.