Before proton we used wine. And wine will continue development with or without steam.

If anything the open source community did more and gave steam a firm platform to build on.

Edit: And to add an observation steams push for Linux is a reaction to Microsoft becoming a contender in the PC games market place. Its not for our benefit anymore than for valves.

Often I download just to seed but only when I know the uploaders

its just another layer of security that will be broken