FreeGameDev

Should the Free Gamer blog cover game (dev) projects that have their source code opened but

1. Have only licenses for code/art that are non-free or "shared source", for example non-commercial licenses
2. Only support non-free platforms like Flash or Unity3D (Flash is still non-free, right?)

Discuss please.

I'd say

1. No
2. No

Because both types of projects are not and can not be part of the free/open source sphere, due to their licensing.

I'd say that all kinds of projects can be mentioned, if they have a portion that is free-as-in-freedom (for example: game 3d models). But in that case the free-as-in-freedom portion should be the scope of the article/mention.

In my opinion..

1. No, as long as this only cover the freegamer blog, not the planets, since I like to hear from games like Frogatto or Nikki and the Robots.
2. Clearly not. Flash may have some open implementations, but the compability is far worse compared to JVM clones or even Mono, also, it still lacks good authoring tools and an up-to-date compiler.

qubodup {l Wrote}:1. Have only licenses for code/art that are non-free or "shared source", for example non-commercial licenses

I'm not sure what you mean here. Does that mean a project with some freely-licensed stuff (e.g. Sauerbraten) would still qualify?

1. No. If the license of the source code is not OSI approved, it is not open source, and hence it is off-topic by definition. Art licenses can be debated but the source code license clearly cannot.
2. No. In my opinion, the platform must be an open standard that has an open source implementation that can run the game.

Well... I am not for overly strict rules about that, but I think we should continue like we did so far, e.g. avoiding non-FOSS code-license projects but mention if non-FOSS art licenses are involved.

For flash or C# I would say if it runs on gnash/lightspark or Mono respectively it would be ok, but personally I still wouldn't report on those projects much, as I dislike the overall idea.

Re flash/C# : definitely no. Probably a lot of people think the same way (for example, I haven't heard for openra for ages and even don't bother about it).

Qubodup, I guess our plan to turn Free Gamer into a facebook game spam^H^H^H^H community centre has fallen flat on its face!

No farmville for you all!

ot: We spam on facebook A LOT: https://www.facebook.com/fossgames

No and no IMO

hmm, be careful with 1=no, it'd exclude a bunch of projects which have foss code but have nonfree media,
some examples going by the column in http://freegamedev.net/wiki/Complete_open_source_games :
lugaru, Privateer Gemini Gold, S.C.O.U.R.G.E. , AlienArena, AssaultCube, Sauerbraten, Warsow, World of Padman, Torcs
i'd personally say 1=yes, nonfree media is tolerable as long as the sourcecode is truly foss

I think it comes down to intent.

Scourge intends to be free. There are plenty of projects that intend to be free but accidentally (i.e. by lack of knowledge of what constitutes truly free) include some non-free things.

Intend doesn't help too much IMHO... what about projects like OpenMW? Sure you can say it's an engine project, but basically it is a FOSS code, propitiatory media game and fully intends to be so (the afterthought of a FOSS media base set currently discussed left aside).
Also games like AlienArena, which to me is quite heavily invested into improving their FOSS engine and is sharing code with other idTech2 projects AFAIK. They are basically pro FOSS, but beg to differ on the licensing of the media. Same goes for Sauerbraten/Cube2.

You are of course right in regard to games like Warsow (which is openly reluctant to share the code and only does so because they have to), or WoP which mainly uses ioQuake3 without furthering it's development much (at least this is my impression... I hope I am not stepping on someones toes there ).

I think we should just stick to the FSF definition that non-free media is somewhat ok but depreciated and go from that any try to convince new projects to have clear and Free licensing terms (old ones often have too much non-free "cruft" to ever fully replace it).

no and no. it's free as in freedom, not free as in "when it's convenient".

Can I still weigh in?

I think Flash and .NET are okay. ActionScript and .NET have always had large open source development communities - even if these developers could only work on proprietary platforms (this is no longer true for .NET). The Flixel framework used to develop Canabalt and many, many other games (Red Rogue is an open source, highly innovative example!) is open source.

ActionScript can be transcompiled by Flex and HaXe, which are both completely open source. HaXe I don't know much about, but I think it transcompiles into JavaScript or something and can do all sorts of funky stuff.

As for Unity, I'd say no. It is too closed. Same goes for GameMaker, though the ENIGMA engine is an open source reimplementation (that is as of yet incomplete).

Also Julius, when talking about projects like OpenMW (or ScummVM, or OpenTTD for that matter), consider that the reimplementations are made of games that were never really meant as complete game engines. The ScummVM team has pulled documentation because they don't want people to make games for an engine that uses loads of hacks to get working (and also, uses an ancient version of Lua for scripting). Being open source is not an afterthought, it's a core aim. However, creating a complete game is not a goal, especially since these engines are not intended for complete games to be created with them.

I agree with Julius' policy on non-libre art.