Libre Gaming Manifesto

[Lyberta]

So I decided to put my thoughts about how games should work in a single document:

Libre Gaming Manifesto

Comments are welcome.

[farrer]

From the 10 topics, 8 are for client/server related games (ie: online ones), 4 of them are just opinions, that for me are barely - if even - related to Libre culture (ie: "All simulation of the game world must happen on the server"; "A server should have the ability to upload custom content to the client which will be activated while playing on that server", "If possible, there should be a way for a server to modify client-side code", "If possible, there should be a plugin system which allows to load plugins which change the way client and server work") . And the remaining not-online-games-topics are the most common sense ones (Free/Livre code and Free/Livre assets).

[Lyberta]

Alright, I've updated it to put multiplayer games in their own section. The reason is that free software/culture licenses already cover the freedom issues related to singleplayer only games.

[Duion]

You should go into politics, you have a talent for inventing complicated rules and regulations that just make everyones life more difficult.

[Lyberta]

You should go into politics, you have a talent for inventing complicated rules and regulations that just make everyones life more difficult.

Some day, some day. Human laws are just software that is interpreted by human brains. Any good software developer can write laws.

[Lyberta]

Some interesting feedback from libreplanet-discuss mailing list:

Thinking about it again, perhaps it's ok to not have absolute clarity,
something like: "a master server may have policies which specifically
restrict listing of modified servers, but they must be in the same
spirit as policies which restrict unmodified servers. For example, if
there is a policy to disallow hate speech in the name of an unmodified
server, that could also extend disallow a modification of a server to
embed hate speech in the modifications, such as graphics etc. And for
example, a master server must not have some significantly longer
approval process for a modified server compared to an unmodified one.

> Well some server admins add proprietary content to their servers and it
> happens a lot. This situation is the same as with JavaScript.

I understand the tendency, but I think there should be a policy that the
game is libre, and if the master server shows modified servers, they
should be libre too. Servers which don't follow the policy should be
reported to the master server operator and result in removing the
listing of the violating server if they do not come in to compliance in
a relatively short amount of time. Of course, players should still be
able to play there if they input the server address manually or use a
different master server. Delisting servers is already going to be needed
anyways: copyright applies to modified servers, and some server admins
will probably violate copyleft on the game's code/art (if it uses
copyleft). The legal system can stop those servers from being operated,
but the master server won't want to list those servers. By the same
method, it should not list servers which have added non-free
code/content that is not a violation of copyright, but does not give
it's users freedom.

This reminds me of an awkward situation where I was looking for some
server to play a game, Xonotic server at the time, when I was still
hopeful for some Brazilian server to exist. After looking through, I
found a server near Brazil, in the public server list, that required me
to download lots of custom server content, and then I started seeing the
file names of the character models being downloaded, and saw things like
"Mr. Burns", "Dexter", "Superman", and many other known characters, I
couldn't see them in reality because I had to leave shortly, but that
kept in my head still today. Are these servers that resort to "popular"
(non-free software, and non-shareable art) a good thing for the
movement?