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

[Jacob Hrbek <kreyren@rixotstudio.cz>]

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 > To let the community make sure the program is safe and not malware,
we need to encourage users to package the program for distros. (See
https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.)
 > It is important to achieve all three goals. The second is often
ignored, but then the free software idea is forgotten.
 > The third is one we often forget.
 > Can you find a good way to achieve all three? -- RMS

While i do agree that distro packaging is important and should always be
available i don't think that relying on it is a good idea for this
usecase as:
a) not all distro maintainers make the process user-friendly enough
(afaik only OpenSUSE and Manjaro has one-click installations)
b) I am not aware of any distro maintainer that has any positive impact
on helping with discoverability.
c) lot of distros introduce functional limitations e.g. apt which from
my experience requires a lot of painful debugging to get the
modification to build and instal
l on the system and is rarely reproducible.
d) Currently the majority of Free Softaware Games are funded by the
community e.g. 0ad and mindustry (with exception alike Wolfenstein which
provide the game engine and tools without the game levels that are
paywalled to sustain the development). I am not aware of any distro
maintainer that enables the user to help with funding lot of the times
the user is not even aware that the developer accepts donations.

So few ideas assuming that the projected optimal solution is to provide
a user-friendly way of installing games without depending on distro/OS
packaging:

1) GNU Guix <https://guix.gnu.org/> has a way to define upstream
packages AND environment to provide required build dependencies using
one command e.g. `guix shell -m path/to/manifest -- make install` to
install the package without depending on downstream of the distro so
that the user can build the package or grab a cached derivation to skip
build.

I th
ink that making this one-click like OpenSUSE is doing and adding a
GUI would make the process more user-friendly to be used outside of GNU
GuixSD (SD = Standalone Distribution, the package manager is independent
and works alongside other package managers) as Digital Distribution
Platform ("DDP" meaning platform providing solution to manage games e.g.
non-free Steam).

2) There is Athenaeum (https://gitlab.com/librebob/athenaeum) which is a
flatpak frontend focused on games that installs them using one-click,
but flatpaks are usually significantly inefficient and you have to trust
whoever made the flatpak definition.

3) Lutris <https://lutris.net> which integrates multiple compatibility
layers and emulators to play non-linux games and it's installation is
one-click, but it has too many issues to be usable in practice (at least
last time i checked i had to restart the installation process multiple
times, maintainer was unwilling to merge fixes and the code ba
se needing
a lot of refactoring to be usable)

4) Desura <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desura> **WAS** an LGPL v2.1
(https://github.com/desura) competitor to Steam which source code is
still available on https://github.com/desura/Desurium which seems to be
sufficiently functional as a solution, but it would need reviving of the
project.

5. Snap Store <https://snapcraft.io/search?category=games> has same
issues as flatpak (inefficient, trust to whoever made the definition).

FWIW i think it's also important to take a look at how itch.io and other
DDPs allow advertising by the game developers e.g.
https://supertuxkart.itch.io/supertuxkart which is what they do to
handle discoverability.

On 12/31/21 05:26, 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. ]]]
>
> For pr
actical success, it is desirable to make the game easy to
> install.
>
> To respect users' freedom, it is important to avoid dependence on any
> nonfree software.
>
> To let the community make sure the program is safe and not malware, we
> need to encourage users to package the program for distros.  (See
> https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.)
>
> It is important to achieve all three goals.  The second is often
> ignored, but then the free software idea is forgotten.
> The third is one we often forget.
>
> Can you find a good way to achieve all three?
>
> --
> 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)
>
>
--
-- Jacob Hrbek


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