LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!

Wed Dec 29 06:07:30 UTC 2021

 > This might be fun, but it would be a lot of work and would need 
leaders who are familiar with free software game development, plus 
leaders who know how to run an event. -- RMS

Agree, i asked relevant developers who have experience with Free 
Software Game Development to join the list and provide their insight + I 
try to contact people organizing open-source / linux game jams to help 
with organization.

I already talked with some of them in terms of organization and i've 
compiled this list of suggestions:
1. provide a handling for "troll submissions" which are usually very 
common in game jams.
2. Consider providing a theme
3. Ban any non-free game engines and any non-free tools e.g. to require 
using GNU GIMP instead of A$ Photoshop.
4. Ban any non-free game assets excluding Creative Commons.
5. Require the game license to be GPLv3 complying
6. Clarification whether the developer can work solo or in a team (teams 
usually have an advantage over solo developers)
7. Require that the game be developed after the event started (to avoid 
people submitting their long finished games to give everyone a fair chance)
8. Game requiring minimum of X ratings (assuming the community deciding 
which game should win) to be placed in leaderboard.
9. The game jam should be a recurring event e.g. 4x a year as one-time 
game jams are not appealing to the game development as the main 
advantage to participating is to get promotion to sustain the further 
development.
10. In general the price pool for game jams is crowd sourced once the 
game jams gets to be known enough for sufficient amount of people to 
participate, but new game jams should have an initial price pool and 
method for people to donate to it. The target price pool should be in 
$$$$ range that enables the top 3~8+ submission to get a sufficient 
economical boost to help with development. Without price pool the games 
usually end up being an abadonware.
11. Fork policy as forking an already finished/worked on game gives the 
contestant an advantage, but open-source game jam should have this 
allowed assuming that their fork provides a significant functionality 
(maybe a separate category?)
12. Provide a list of Free Software Tools so that people who are not 
familiar with Free Software has the resources to know how to participate.
13. The event should be announced +- 1 month in advance with a heavy 
promotion and usually the theme is announced at the day where the event 
starts to avoid people working on a game prior to the event to get an 
unfair advantage.
14. The open-source jam <https://itch.io/jam/open-jam-2020> provides a 
"Open-Source Karma" points which are points for following best practices 
alike provided README, etc.. that increase the change of win, this 
should also be included in LibreJam.

 > The mailing lists you sent your message to are either (1) not the 
FSF's or (2) meant for other things.  Maybe discusion at fsfla.org is ok 
for this purpose.  fsf-community-team is not meant to be a discussion 
list. -- RMS

1. I wanted to include Free Software Australia. i know that they are not 
part of FSF, but they are a group of volunteers spreading Free Software 
in Australia that are compatible with values of FSF such as 
https://freesoftware.org.au/hardware-and-software-recommendation. So i 
though that they might provide their point of view on this proposal. 
They can be excluded from the discussion if you feel like it's 
inappropriate.

2. My fault! Moved the discussion from fsf-community-team to 
libreplanet-discuss.

On 12/29/21 05:51, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> This might be fun, but it would be a lot of work and would need
> leaders who are familiar with free software game development,
> plus leaders who know how to run an event.
>
> The mailing lists you sent your message to are either (1) not the
> FSF's or (2) meant for other things.  Maybe discusion at fsfla.org is ok
> for this purpose.  fsf-community-team is not meant to be a discussion
> list.
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>
On 12/28/21 11:43, Jacob Hrbek wrote:
> There are too many overhyped proprietary games that are either 
> unplayable or are just a rewrite of something that already exists and 
> not enough libre games that are worth the time playing where from my 
> talks with the relevant game developers seems to be mainly due to the 
> economy of developing more complicated games and their inability to 
> promote the games to the general public to sustain the development.
>
> Thus as a solution i am proposing for FSF* network to cooperate and 
> host a "Libre Game Jam" as in a recurring tournament that anyone can 
> join and submit GPLv3-complying games in set amount of time where top 
> submissions (community voted) get promotion and monetary rewards.
>
> To organize this jam i am suggesting:
> a) Use https://itch.io which is MIT licensed digital distribution 
> platform <https://github.com/itchio/itch> which already has the 
> management for these jams on https://itch.io/jams (webapp source code 
> under GPLv3 is allegedly said to be released on demand, submitted 
> https://github.com/itchio/itch.io/issues/1265, other clients are GPLv3 
> complying)
> b) Ask craig from FSF Directory to dedicate 10 min in the weekly FSD 
> meetup for managing the game jam and make the submission on the FSD 
> wiki or on other appropriate submission (i asked him and he didn't 
> disagreed at the time of sending this email + i checked that he has 
> the time to do that as part of the FSD meetup)
>
> Inspired by LudumDare <https://ludumdare.com/> which is also a 
> proof-of-concept that generates libre games monthly e.g. 
> https://github.com/topics/ludum-dare-38
>
> To FSF, FSFE, FSFLA, FSFI, Free Software Australia 
> (#AcceptFSFAUinFSFNetwork they do a lot of great work!), RMS
>
-- 
-- Jacob Hrbek

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