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this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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The core principal of GNU from which every other principal is derived is "I shouldn't need an ancient unmaintained printer driver that only works on windows 95 to use my god damned printer. I should have the source code so I can adapt it to work with my smart toaster"
If an app is open source then I've almost never encountered a situation where I can't build a working version. Its happened to me once that I remember. A synthesia clone called linthesia. Would not compile for love nor money and the provided binary was built for ubuntu 12 or something.
Linux was probably ready for the 64-bit appocalypse even before Apple for this exact reason. Anything open source will just run, on anything, because some hobbiest has wanted to use it on their favourite platform at some point. And if not, you'd be surprised how not hard it is to checkout the sourcecode from github and make your own port. Difficult, but far from impossible.
Steam games do not distribute source code, which means they break, and when they break the community can't fix them. They can't statically link glibc because that would put them in violation of the GPL (as far as I'm aware anyway). They are fundamentally second class citizens on linux because they refuse to embrace its culture. FOSS apps basically never die while there's someone to maintain them.
Its like when American companies come to Europe and realise the workers have rights and then get a reputation as scuzzballs for trying to rules lawyer those rights.
Okay so bundle glibc. As far as I know link systemcalls are set up to look in the working directory first
Why would statically compiling it violate the GPL?
It wouldn't; glibc is LGPL not GPL. The person you're replying to was mistaken.
You know what, that explains how they can exist on linux at all. Because from what I understand, if glibc was GPL and not LGPL, closed source software would basically be impossible to run on the platform. Whichโฆ maybe isn't the best outcome when you think about it. As much as I hate the Zoom VDI bridge, I don't want "using windows" to be the alternative.
and yeah, from the source you provided, I can see why they don't statically link. "If you dynamically link against an LGPLed library already present on the user's computer, you need not convey the library's source". So basically if they bundle glibc then they need to provide the glibc source to users on request but if they just distribute a binary linked against the system one then that's their obligations met.
Welcome to "complying with the LGPL for the terminally lazy", I'll be your host "Every early linux port of a steam game!"
My understanding of the linking rules for the GPL is that they're pretty much always broken and I'm not even sure if they're believed to be enforceable? I'm far out of my element there. I personally use MPLv2 when I want my project to be "use as you please and, if you change this code, please give your contributions back to the main project"