Another place to discuss libre games

[drummyfish]

Hello,

I've recently discovered that @freemedia2018 has his own forum focused generally on the combination of free software and free culture, which I have joined, after which he has created a subsection dedicated to promoting libre games.

It is not a competing forum to FGD as it is about cultural freedom in general and the libre game subsection is meant to focus more on promotion of these games than their development -- it is an additional place to discuss these games and so help make them more popular. I would also like to see it being more strict about asset licensing and encouraging public domain.

There are currently not many people around likely because @freemedia2018 is probably hesitant to self promote his project, so I'd like to let you people know about it. This is not an ad, I have decided to post this genuinely because I think it is a cool project. If you think so too, come join us

https://softwarefreedom.jcink.net/index.php?act=idx

https://softwarefreedom.jcink.net/index ... wtopic=119

[Julius]

Somewhat ironic that it uses a closed source forum software though

[freemedia2018]

Somewhat ironic that it uses a closed source forum software though :p

Fair comment. What happened there was that that forum wasn't chosen in the first place. It split off from another forum, that host closed but not before providing a simple migration path to the website where it's located now.

The forum software is horrid and I would much prefer PHPBB or SMF. Most forum software is horrid these days, and since I'm not running it on my computer (I believe most of it functions with JS turned off even) it's acceptable, but by FSF standards it's insufficient. Not that I would be in control of the servers anyway, even if it ran PHPBB or SMF. If it were my server, that garbage would not be on there-- but it's not my server. At least it's not hosted on GitHub, though technically Microsoft could buy it and so theoretically, it shares that problem.

[drummyfish]

Good point, I didn't notice, would be great to migrate to free one in the future.

[freemedia2018]

Good point, I didn't notice, would be great to migrate to free one in the future.

Good luck finding one, the hosting is free. There's a war on forums, led by tapatalk. I've already lost two, I'm probably sticking with this one while possible.

What I'd recommend instead is you starting a forum with the same setup, then I will join that one as well. Because forums disappear all the time.

You know what happens with forums (on average) that are hosted on the admin's own server? Same thing, only faster. The admins abandon them, and instead of staying up for years they just drop off the internet.

I spent a couple years working to make my operating system free, I'm still working on the bios/firmware (even a free kernel is getting harder to find, unless you compile it yourself-- I already know Alex Oliva.) It's going to take a bit longer to make the platform of every website I visit free, even if it's better when it is. But start one and I'll visit it. As a forum admin, my priority was to preserve the data people had posted. Forums tend to suck at that, actually. I've got lots of stories about that (mostly ones about other admins trying and failing.) And I'm mostly talking about PHPbb and SMF. I won't use Discourse, it's awful. This is worth fixing, but only if done right-- and that's far too rare.

[fluffrabbit]

Can't we have discussions about games that aren't "libre"?

[freemedia2018]

Can't we have discussions about games that aren't "libre"?

It it makes you feel better, we don't have a subforum for non-free forum software either.

It's better if nobody uses non-free software. But I visit websites that use it all the time. I don't generally recommend cloud-based conversion software, but it's better than installing non-free software on your own computer (or server.) I don't generally recommend non-free forum software, but if someone else installs it, that's not enough for me to avoid it when there's no reasonable alternative. I think we started with free software running the forum. The people running the servers quit-- we are lucky we got the data even.

Precautions are taken in that regard, but another migration would be the THIRD in two years. It's getting ridiculous.

Although the most ideal future is one with no non-free software, the traditional "saint" in the tongue-in-cheek version of piety in free software is about software on computers you control-- not computers you don't own or have admin rights / decision-making authority about. So avoiding non-free on "the cloud" is secondary, a new frontier. With all the giant setbacks free software has suffered over the past 5 years, a lot of ground is lost. Tapatalk hasnt helped either. They're doing to online forums what Verizon has done to the baby Bells. I don't recommend installing or using non-free forum software on your server. I don't recommend the jcink guy does either, but he does-- I still use his website. I'm expecting this thread to contain dishonest arguments and equivocation, but I've already been trolled on here quite a lot. I don't know if it needs to happen every time I post here.

[fluffrabbit]

I really don't care about server backend software. Everything will be broken in 10 years anyways. I also don't feel that a forum is a matter of national security and requires battle-tested FLOSS like a stable version of phpBB or SMF. That's unnecessary. If you want to talk about your crappy open source games, the conversation doesn't change just because the forum software does.

[drummyfish]

Can't we have discussions about games that aren't "libre"?

I don't know what the exact rules are, but my view on this is they should definitely be allowed to be discussed, you shouldn't get banned for mentioning a proprietary game, that would be ridiculous, and I am against censorship. I even think we should discuss them, to be able to criticize them, clone them etc. The point is it should be a forum of people who aim to promote libre games and reject proprietary games.

Good luck finding one, the hosting is free.

I know this is pretty difficult and even though I am ultimately against it I can currently kinda tolerate internet services that don't run on FOSS, because the SW isn't running on my computer, I am only communicating with it. As long as you have the option to export the forum database in a common format so that you can migrate away, proprietary forum is an acceptable temporary solution to me, but the issue should still be kept in mind and we should think about solutions.

[fluffrabbit]

Great. mobilegamedev.org is a forum where libre and proprietary games are on equal footing.

[Julius]

Because forums disappear all the time.

You know what happens with forums (on average) that are hosted on the admin's own server? Same thing, only faster. The admins abandon them, and instead of staying up for years they just drop off the internet.

Yes and no... I get what you mean, we also suffer from not very active server admins here since a few years (with no good migration path), but well performing shared PHP hosting on large scale reliable hosts has gotten so ridiculously cheap in the last few years that you can basically run a php forum for free on your <2$/month domain&email package. So other than legal reasons related to user data and deleting illegal content, there is really nothing stopping you from running a forum yourself for a long time.

[freemedia2018]

the issue should still be kept in mind and we should think about solutions.

I agree, but after two migrations in just as many years (actually in less than two years I think) the only solution I'm thinking about is "put up a better forum and when the community is ready to move, I'll follow them." Two forums are better than one in this regard-- Note the similar idea about new forums on FGV vs. this one.

I don't know what the exact rules are, but my view on this is they should definitely be allowed to be discussed, you shouldn't get banned for mentioning a proprietary game, that would be ridiculous, and I am against censorship. I even think we should discuss them, to be able to criticize them, clone them etc.

My stance on discussion of non-free software is that the FSF is too strict about it, to the point where we can't even have discussions that might ultimately better the position of free software, because too many topics are dealt with in a top-down fashion reaching from Boston across the globe.

That said, it's a forum about free software, and non-free software is off-topic by default, but not Verboten.

The point is it should be a forum of people who aim to promote libre games and reject proprietary games.

Since Drummy leans a little harder on free speech than I do (I admire that, I can't personally lead every front there is and fight equally hard in every battle) I'm interested in what he has to say about it. Free speech arguments from a free software advocate are more likely to convince me than the ones Open source made which I got bored with over a decade ago-- for the purpose of selling us out.

Either way, I consider the ideal is somewhere between the FSF (so strict then even highly relevant topics are stifled) and Open source (let's take over Ubuntu, PyCon and the Linux Foundation and get paid to run ads for companies lobbying the government against our rights to produce free software, then tell people it's stupid to favour free software over ours.)

And I hate false compromise, but some compromises are hard to improve upon by going significantly further in either direction.

[Lyberta]

Deleted.

[freemedia2018]

Getting 403 Forbidden. It's funny how forum about freedom puts the most free (Tor) users in jail.

That sucks a lot. Forum is more than a year old, tor compatibility WAS a goal of the forum host, two hostings ago. Before long, the whole thing is going to migrate to whatever ideal host Drummy finds, then we will move there and then it will disappear. Again. But for a few glorious weeks it will be free, tor wont be restricted (You've got access to the darknet, who cares about our silly free software forum?) And Drummy and I will both be happy.

Forums about freedom ARE better when self-hosted, if possible. I used to run a server, not for a forum, I can't do that at the moment. Though I will ask the jcink guy if he is stopping tor users on purpose or if there's a way to make it work. I was planning to work on my book today-- instead I've spent the whole time answering questions about the free forum host I had to migrate to when the host I was using folded. That happens sometimes. I'm happy you were interested enough to visit with tor, thanks for the heads up.

While we are evaluating forums, I'm curious (particularly if it works for you, Lyberta) what you all think of this one: http://linuxinternationals.org/forum/index.php I'm a regular there, it's quiet enough that I assumed they wanted to be left alone, but I just "got off the phone" with the admin and he doesn't have a problem with new members.

It's a pretty relaxed forum in terms of topics and you should feel free to join, but mostly I'm curious how it holds up to the other measures we talked about here. Some of the things I talk about on my own forum also get discussed there, and the admin is a good guy.

[fluffrabbit]

"Measures" to weaken the US software industry, no doubt. Why do I keep coming to this forum?

[freemedia2018]

"Measures" to weaken the US software industry, no doubt. Why do I keep coming to this forum?

I don't know. People in Congress as well as the Armed Forces take an oath to defend the Constitution against all threats, foreign and domestic. The US software industry has weakened the Constitution considerably, and you've already made it clear (in your own words, rather directly) that you care more about the industry than the Constitution. But I won't be shamed for being on the right side of that oath against Gates and a Dead LSD dropper (not that dropping LSD makes you a bad person, but I'm not certain Jobs was entirely sane either.)

In matters where it's the industry or the Constitution, the latter wins every time for me. Why you think the industry should have more rights than the people is beyond me. They aren't "rights" when they don't belong to everyone, they're exceptions. IMO if a business can't do business without sabotaging the government (literally an act of treason) then they should go out of business. It's one thing to run a business illegally-- it's quite another to rig the government so breaking the law is legal for you, but doing what's legal is a crime for everyone else. That's pretty much what the industry has done.

[Julius]

*hust* in before the US political flame war *hust* To both of you: please keep you petty political arguments somewhere else
They are anyways just distractions from the real issues this world is facing

[Jastiv]

Industry controlling the government is a problem, in general, while they make laws to favor specific large companies.

[freemedia2018]

They are anyways just distractions from the real issues this world is facing :p

I certainly don't agree with that last part (quoted), but it's your forum (either literally or close enough for relevant purposes) so message received.