Here the transcription of what I consider the most important parts of the meeting.
I don't know a suitable space where to put audiofiles so meeting recording is copied on jak1's server inside /home/livio. I hadn't better ideas at the moment.
Keep in mind that I'm not a natural English speaker so you will probably find some errors, missing dialogues or misunsderstandings.
And not less important, my speech is from someone who knows not so much from TMW itself since four years of playing and way less of contributing so expect my informations not to be always correct as well.
00:00:00 - Participants introductions
00:01:10 - spongy: "My friends can't name a single libre game {...} that's my emphasis for being here."
00:11:25 - vvbudh: "What's a libre game?"
00:11:50 - sm2n explains that libre game have to under free licenses for both software and assets (GPL and CC mostly)
00:12:25 - sm2n says that libre games allow the people to practically make whatever they want with their games without any technological restrictions that doesn't makes sense (Livio: I guess the technological restrictions he meant the proprietary game licenses that forbid any modification or redistribution of modified games but there's surely more...)
00:12:32 - "That's why we wouldn't use Discord and stuff like that."
00:12:56 - emorrp: "I'd like to highlight Mindustry as example: mainly because I discovered it first through Steam before knowing it was a libre game."
00:13:33 - poVoq points out to make distinction from opensource games (and game engines) since those rely on proprietary components or non-free licenses for software and/or assets
00:14:40 - infrred says that according to the "About" page on libregames.org a libre game is a game owned by the community that plays it, basically a matter of ownership and control and free licenses are means for this purpose as well.
00:15:00 - infrred makes example of a game company that goes under and its community works for relasing patches for a commercial product...
00:15:21 - emorrp1: "...and that sounds that like The Mana World is struggling with ...{incomprehensible}... a game that have existed and desires for a new community direction ...{incomprehensible}... end with The Mana World version one or whatever and The Mana World Community Edition version 2"
00:15:53 - infrred: "I tried it before it was Evol Online and, uhm... I think some other things it's happened before and didn't work out too well but... Maybe..."
00:16:25 - Livio: I'm saying that the game that looks like more "proprietary oriented" (probably is not correct to say like that) it's TMW2:ML. According to a developer, closer to a EULA including 2FA. This game is not really officially part of TMW but it's developed together by an administrator and an old guild leader from TMW Legacy. Evol Online was an attempt to use the new server engine and ended into being merged into TMW Evolved. I don't know if some of the old Evol Online developers are still active contributing to TMW Evolved.
00:17:55 - Livio: The main problem is the lack of developers while existed development team splitted in two different projects (mainly for different ways of thinking I guess) and that's not a good thing for the future of TMW community. (or any other free software community in my opinion)
00:18:14 - Livio: "Can we consider The Mana World a libre game? Actually, I don't know. The client and the servers are free software but when you have to accept ToS and privacy agreements that may not be so 'free', well... That's quite hard to understand to me that I don't know if consider this game free or not"
00:18:51 - Livio: I told the participants that he is not officially part of TMW not even as a developer.
00:19:17 - infrred talks about that ToS and privacy policies are set by people running the service that are responsible for that but is also a freedom of anyone else to setup a competing service. Ideal solutions, will be of course, federated games where chars, items and the like can be moved from world to world but it's something that he don't know how to describe a solution for that.
00:20:03 - Livio I vaguely introduce the concept behind TMW Vault denoting how one account for every server could be a privacy concern for someone.
00:20:30 - Livio I say that TMW is a SPI recognized project but server is running under M$ Azure. So I don't know if a game can be considered free if runs under a proprietary hosting service.
00:21:01 - infrred: "That's more of a problem, yeah... It's like using Discord except somehow running on Discord, it's a little worse than that."
00:21:10 - Livio I state that I doesn't have access to that server and I doesn't know what's running together with TMW Legacy and I don't know if actually M$ is performing data mining operations on that server. I explain that I started the game years ago without knowing anything about this. Then vaguely talks the fuss about old self-hosting attempts by someone in the community managing things at his own will until SPI recognized TMW. {When someone named "Platyna" was online maybe?}
00:22:54 - emorrp1 explains that libregames.org specifically has no leader since it's a collaborative environment.
00:23:55 - franzo2 says that some opensource games are just one step away into becoming fully libre. A pretty common thing is to find libre game engines running with non-libre assets. Many artist thinks that games are making money out of their work so some game communities are going to buying proprietary assets from artists. A problem is that there are artist that aren't aware about licenses.
00:24:50 - artchad says his assets are licensed as CC-SA.
00:25:22 - franzo2 points out that people are not aware what Creative Common licenses can do.
00:26:05 - franzo2 says that there are lot of other games with opensource engines but with unlicensed arts because assets developer are not aware of licenses and they will probably not make a game libre because of that.
{I got lost in talks about licenses and other games here}
00:33:04 - Livio: I talk about that TMW client (ManaPlus) allows anyone to use his own custom update host with his own very assets that can change art, sounds, background music but not much else even when connecting to the official server. Stating out that a custom host, despite having made his own assets, probably forgets to add license and credits may lead (or Ledz
) to possible issues.
00:35:30 - emorrp1 states that tries to avoid to have a small group of people in control of a community by taking the Debian Project as reference
00:40:00 A general dislike is shared talking about Javascript talking about web development
00:46:00 - Livio: I talk about the hassle of guild sites with Shivtr due to lot of scripts inside webpages from applicating in the guild to answering guild forums thread. You can still browse guild sites without Javascript enabled but you can't post anything (same issue with TMW forum).
{Overall meeting is about into technical issues with web development in general at this point}
00:58:00 Overall discussion about libregames.org channels, some Android Mumble clients issues.
01:02:55 - Livio: I say that it's inside the meeting due to concerns about TMW and didn't even know about libregames.org existence if not due to a TMW forum thread.
01:03:12 - Livio: "Most of the software I know it's because I've found it in the Debian/Devuan repos. I'm not going to use search engines, Github, GitLab or whatever. Nowadays browser are so heavy that I prefer to browse with Lynx..." Follows his complaints about CloudFlare and Javascript requirements disrupting textual browsing experience leading him to give up browsing such sites.
01:05:30 - Livio I state again that I don't cover any official role in TWM and that TMWT itself doesn't exactly "sent" me to the meeting. I said I'll make contact soon with TMW community hoping to be of any help.
01:05:56 - poVoq says something about a site I couldn't get the name where multiple players join together to play new games making a video streaming about that. So he said that TMW should make an event(?) on that site.
01:06:16 - Livio: I ask to repeat again.
01:06:26 - poVoq says about promoting games on "FOSSlounge???" by announcing on their site and make events with more players with community members explaining the game to those who never played it doing that as PROMOTIONAL effort.
01:07:22 - Livio: I say that's the first time in TMW history that a official Discord chat bridge appeared and that almost no players come online to chat in Mumble because "it's too difficult to configure".
01:08:58 - poVoq says about a web interface for Mumble that can be useful for players.
01:09:18 - Livio: I say I even asked to put an online Mumble players widget in the forum but there were too few people interested in Mumble (kiddos will give up "cuz too difficult").
01:10:08 - Livio: I say that proprietary platforms aim to "make" people lazy in order to be more "appetizing" for them (or I've should said "appealing"?). More people then will join because it's easy and it's used by a lot of people (sort of "trendy")
01:10:32 - Livio: In recent years TMW have lost quite a lot of his players so TMW uses Discord and Steam plugins in a launcher (in order to attempt to reach more players) but it's nothing that's close to the free software mentality.
01:10:55 - sm2n says that disagrees with me (Livio) about people not making effort {...} but people shouldn't "work" in order to get something a libre gaming community could have simplified in order to let people naturally be able to accomplish similar tasks. "...that's a better way to get more users."
01:11:47 - Livio I agree with him talking about development issues as well due to lack of documentation.
01:13:39 - sm2n asks me if one of the problem developing for TMW is missing an online (and more expert) TMW developer for support due to its international community (I guess he means timezone issues mostly).
01:13:55 - Livio I say that despite many are Americans or German (meaning that EU and US timezones can be barely covered) it would be nice that you can grab a copy of server, the tools and the documentation and be completely independent without need of asking for help. (WildX once said: TMW is not RPGMaker).
01:14:29 - Livio I'm talking about the split between the developers that lead TMW rEvolt not to have enough players. I'm saying how Hurnscald is an example that made server less attractive for old players used to TMW Legacy that stills the one most liked by the players today.
01:15:34 - sm2n proposed to host a "common" tutorial to host a Mumble server
01:17:32 - artchad is talking about press.libregame.org that collects sites contacts for other games as well.
01:18:08 - emorrp1 invites me to encourage people to come by to the "organization" channel and say {...}
01:18:22 - vvbudh: "I think that an index of different communities is an excellent idea."
{other people agree immediately after then emorrp1 talks about something to chat rooms (I didn't got that part of conversation very well )}
{Conversation about libregames.org, ideas and licensing support follows}
01:27:15 - Livio: I'm making a silly example of how libre games have potential to be educational tools for young players as well. (Maybe not something TMW project is interested in)
01:28:00 - vvbudh agrees but denotes that people looks out for connections inside a community more than a chance to learn something.
01:28:19 - Livio: I talk about my personal experience in TMW about "social connections" from being a n00b, meeting people who helped me, fooling around with a bot until developing some code. Evidencing that's what comes out from libre games community and a polite behaviour.
01:29:25 - franzo2 agrees making some examples how libre games communities (STK, Mindustry, etc...) are a hub for a nice social experience where you can learn and be part of the games probably due to their size too. Generally invites to aggregate more than centralize people.
01:32:52 - Livio: I'm denoting here that one of the problems of free software projects, generally speaking, is that are too many and too scattered while proprietary projects generally succeed into getting a larger community. Taking a well known FPS online game as example I talk about how aggressive and arrogant those communities usually are, compared to other libre games ones. Another example is how contributions (like mods) to proprietary games can be lost or forgotten in time.
01:35:13 - Cesar talks about something (some kind of launcher?) to allow people to play, rate and review libre games.
01:37:30 - artchad says how actually libregames wiki covers that role despite being developed under a more controlled way because games must follows certain criterias.
{A conversation about content development tutorial hosting takes place}
01:39:35 - poVoq says that he was maintaining tutorial sites but it's a substantial effort since content should not go deprecated and, in his case, he prefers not doing a tutorial at all.
01:39:57 - Livio: I'm talking about TMW having old sparse forum threads about development and tools and their search can be quite time-consuming for a novice developer. Then I'm proposing to collect links about tutorials of common interests.
01:41:30 - artchad says that hosting a wiki it's an administrative effort by itself.
01:41:49 - emorrp1 replies that's possible for libregames.org to host a game wiki for other communities.
01:42:15 - Livio: I'm saying that having a wiki on libregames.org can partially help with engaging with other people from other communities: from game guides to development even in some "common areas" (Tiled/Hercules scripting maybe are fine examples).
01:43:06 - infrred seems to invite developers into making a less "specialized" development for their games in order to help other communities. Follows an example of Krita tutorials.
01:44:45 - Livio: I'm denoting how it's rarely possible to make shareable tutorials for other games unless they are using the very same engine or other common parts or tools. I'm inviting then to link up communities and share development resources.
01:45:11 - infrred says that tutorials made only for a particular game don't help into linking up with other communities and enlarging their own.
01:45:41 - Livio: I'm saying that this problem can't be solved from TMW side since server development tutorial can be useful only for other Hercules game server developers.
01:46:20 - Livio: This time I'm taking graphics development as example as shareable tutorials like map development in Tiled as it's used by other games like Flare for example, despite having a different graphics. I prefer to link up existing tutorials for Tiled instead of making another one. (I'm not expert with map development and Tiled so mine it's just an idea)
01:47:59 - inffred is asking if there are communities around with identical problems (from development to hosting) that may team up for the same purpose and how to network them together.
{A conversation about how niche communities can link up and if they are really interested to be found as their interests may not be suitable for a large audience}
01:51:03 - Livio: I'm talking about how generally modern social medias and web search engines aren't helping people into discovering something new nor people itself seems to be interested into making a bit more effort into searching or exploring. Then follows a proposal for a silly Android applications that links up to a libre games list because many young people don't even own a computer but a rather crappy tablet/smartphone device full of proprietary crap.
{A conversation about web contents follows}
01:59:58 - poVoq talks about (Pixelsomething?) website where developers can showcase their work and share it on the social medias.
02:01:22 - emorrp1 talks about libregames.org subdomains offered to communities to redirect to their official sites.
{A conversation about web hosting and itch.io follows then meeting is about to end talking about how to organize recurrent libregames.org meetings}