LibreGaming community - Introduction

We are a community dedicated to playing and developing libre games, that is videogames and board games with free/libre software and algorithms, and free/libre artistic assets (models, musics). We believe software and culture should be free as part of a global struggle for freedom and equality online and offline. We aim to become a meta-community that can bring closer smaller communities. We don't want to become a big central organization, but rather a network of organic initiatives scattered throughout cyberspace.

For example, we'd like to bring players alongside game developers and designers, as well as contributors to libre games launchers like Athenaeum and GameHub. We believe this approach can enrich and empower the entire libre gaming ecosystem.

We are just getting started. Feel free to contribute new ideas and feedback by contacting us. Check out the preliminary notes to our first meeting, as well as the first, second and third meeting's minutes.

We are

• a loose collective rather than a formal organization
  • feel free to invite new people and share permissions with people you know
  • don’t ask permission to improve things, just go ahead and see where it goes, then let it be known so that others can review what you did
• supportive of accessibility: everyone should be able to play games, no matter their physical or hardware/network capabilities
• encouraging existing libre games communities to join us and help improve the overall ecosystem

We are not

• morally-superior purists: we want to develop a libre ecosystem, but will not judge or insult people who take part in other ecosystems
• a community where nazis and harassers are welcome
• a space to discuss non-free games and ecosystem, see Gaming Space or Linux Gaming (TODO: links) instead

Communication

• Domain name: following a public poll, we went with libregaming.org, see also previous name poll
• Privacy: While we defend privacy online, our chatrooms are public spaces and may be logged accordingly
• Moderation: We defend free speech, which means we believe no government can tell you how to think/feel, but doesn't mean you can engage in abusive behavior; nazis, harassers, and other abusers are not welcome in our community
• Color scheme: We use Orange (#FF8F23) and Blue (#4FBAD5)

If you would like to take part in the community, please see contacting us.

Services

For now, we do not provide any services as LibreGaming collectives. Below you will find a list of services we would be interested to maintain.

Internal use

• A URL shortener
• an audio/video conferencing server? (video requires a lot of resources)

Public use

• A website with information about libre games (maybe cooperate with LibreGameWiki), and links to various related communities, as well as tutorials to selfhost your own libre game servers
• A matchmaking service/bot to find people to play with
• A chat bridging service (eg. matterbridge) for existing communities, to open oneself to new protocols/ecosystems
• Tooling/scripts to make it easier to selfhost libre game servers
• Subdomains on libregaming.org for new projects to get started; only for libregaming projects, because we don't want external projects to technically depend on libregaming.org?

Resources

• Our logos (SVG)
• Our first attempt at a website (ZIP), based on play-libre-games.md
• LibreGaming space screenshot on matrix (PNG)

External resources

• Organizing a meeting
  • planning a timezone-aware event (alternative to framadate, TODO: can we selfhost it?)
  • sharing a specific time across timezones (TODO: can we selfhost it?)
  • taking notes together (use "Freely" permissions to avoid everyone having to register)
    • People involved with LibreGaming.Org
    • Overview of topics/“directions” being worked on
  • audio conferencing: Mumble server on hribhrib.at (TODO: can we setup mumble-web client and mumble-web-proxy WebRTC server?)
• Other related collectives
  • FreeGameDev.net has a modern IRC server (with a public Jabber/XMPP gateway and a matchmaking bot) and a forum for libre gamedev
  • LibreGameWiki a wiki with detailed information about libre games

TODO: below are leftovers from the previous pad, what are they for? do they work?

• https://remixicon.com/ finding Apache-2.0 svg avatars (94% scale for rooms)
• https://storm.debian.net/ Sandstorm ad-hoc hosting

Below hasn't been updated yet

TODO: maybe move to the meeting minutes this last part?

• Bridging: XMPP, irc (limited rooms?), discord?
• pro-actively bridge to IRC but be clear that it's a degraded user experience and try to limit the sheer number of rooms to match user expectations
• The bifrost matrix bridge to XMPP is not great, perhaps can host a public XMPP gateway to matrix instead?
  • matrix-bifrost is the only xmpp-matrix bridge in both ways
  • it's also not good on xmpp->matrix side, at least when using the official matrix.org gateway
• Discussion (long) about Discord
• object to Discord on principle of non-libre, centralised, compromising ideals, so shouldn't pro-actively bridge channels from here to there
• aware that some libre games have their official communities on Discord, and sadly they may not see anything wrong with that, e.g. strong network effects
• popularity isn't everything, it's ok to be a small cohesive community, but advertising libre stuff on non-libre platforms is ok for outreach
• not everyone agrees with the statements above :p