Hello from LibreGaming.Org (and three points)

[SeanScherer]

Hello to everyone here at The Mana World !

I'm one of the people that are doing stuff as "LibreGaming.Org", the group that invited for a voice chat recently , that Jesusalva pointed out (here viewtopic.php?p=163118#p163118) . And since Livio came over to listen to what we're up to and thinking (the group got founded last summer, but we've only started to take speed since the start of the year), I thought it'd be good to come here and say hello as well .

A couple clarifications though:
First, we aren't actually connected with the "LibreGameWiki" project - though I can see that its easy to get the two of us confused (very similar name). But I guess our goals are somewhat similar (I guess you might say we're trying to take a "broader" approach).

Second, I did see there was bit of conflict in that thread (re - our invitation to the voice chat), regarding Libre / Open source and such. So I just wanted to point out that within our group, we have pretty much the whole bandwidth of opinions that were put forwards here in that thread (so - we trying to bridge different views, I guess you might say).

So finally, I guess why I'm writing is that I think we're interested in what GameDevs and communities think might be helpful for their project - so, what would be useful to them that we could maybe offer? I think that's at least one direction that we might be going in .

I'll be round (and I've promised Livio I'll try to actually join The Mana World game itself as well sooner or later), so looking forwards to replies!

Regards,
Sean Scherer

[WildX]

Welcome to our forums! It was unfortunate that the other thread descended into a bit of chaos, but I'm glad you got through that and still decided to post this!

There has been a lot of debate recently about the pros and cons of the FLOSS ideology. There's a mix of ideas in this community so we also try to make sure we maintain a very tolerant environment. Unfortunately around this topic there can be a lot of controversy. The Mana World is very much non-purist as an organisation, but we have always had a more purist side of the community as well and they're often great contributors. Personally, I welcome the open debate!

[jesusalva]

Hocus and WildX are the less purist from the staff*, while Hello=) and MadCamel are the more purist ones (MadCamel being extreme to the point of not joining the IRC room because it is bridged to Discord).

If you are FLOSS defender and can tolerate WildX and Hocus views, then you're set!
If you are NOT a FLOSS defender (a liberalist?) and can respect MadCamel's rather extreme opinions, then you're also set!

Well, if you're not set, then this will be an exercise of patience and civility.

---

PS. Off-Topic and Player Talk are the sections usually targeted by spambots, so these sections require your posts to be manually approved by a staff member. There's about twenty people with approval permissions so it should be fairly quick, but that's pretty much why it does not shows up instantly. Not sure which other sections require or doesn't require this. I think this manual approval procedure goes away after 10 non-offtopic posts.

PPS. I'm closer to WildX and Hocus, I guess it happens with most maintainers ─ I just need things to work and when there's so many stuff you *need to* work as smoothly possible, you tend to be lenient Happened to other maintainers too, except Platyna I guess, I am not sure if she would bother if something suddenly stopped working and needed a replacement But this thread is about Libre Gaming, not about our views on FLOSS

*: I believe this position used to be held proudly by EJlol, but he has left the team </3

[EJlol]

Hocus and WildX are the less purist from the staff*

...

*: I believe this position used to be held proudly by EJlol, but he has left the team </3[/size]

I think you can certainly put me into that position yes. I'm a windows only user and use Paint.net (which I will promote when I get the chance ). The only border I have is blatant copyright violations. In the past many people tried to contribute rpg maker assets, or other (commercially) copyrighted assets. That is a no for me. I'm always disappointed to see these assets back in other small open source projects :/. I believe in creating your own stuff and 'stealing' stuff with permission*


*note: Again you should take permission quite liberal here. If someone posts it here at the forums/irc/etc, I automatically see that as a permission unless noted otherwise

[WildX]

EJ, I am a Mac user so I think I win the title of least purist by default

[Hello=)]

Hello=). Nice to see you here - also, I should thank Livio for coming this meeting. He even been kind enough to make transcript! I've appreciated it a lot. Hey, Livio the Sharpshooter, you rock! In the end thanks to all that around I got few interesting ideas to try.

As for conflicts/disagreements/etc...

When it comes to voice chats, I'd say hanging on your IRC been fun anyway, tho on my side I'd prefer some meetings like that in text format (e.g. IRC). Or, here, devs once had funny meeting in the inn (Dimond's Cove) - try that eventually: it's unusual but fun - and logical thing for game . There're ppl who like voice comms and ppl who dont. Many techies and/or young ppl dislike voice calls. On my side its compounded by metered 3G/4G link.

Worse "conflicts" are IMO in other dimensions. One of worst probs: devs and players like 2 disintegrated subcommunities. Opposite of ideas I've met on libregaming IRC chans. Another would be "techies vs nontechies". In TMW nontechies won. Unfortunately it ruined delicate balance of light and darkness, made core coders dormant or driven away and things started heading weird scary directions.

Then there're quite different minds and ways. To highlight difference:
- When I joined LibreGaming IRC I got lectured on libre vs open difference in no time (and ye, my heart belongs libre, so it's been fun).
- When I chatted in mentioned thread I got lectured on how important devs freedom to use proprietary tools is.

Thart's a difference. Oh, I'd grant its weird idea to point gun and demand to be libre, but on other hand proprietary tools are often disgusting for opensourcers and it can drive plenty of capable ppl away.

What can be most helpful? That's hard question. But I'll try. Little advertising in libre communities, some fresh blood of libre-friendly players and devs. Ideally, some powerful libre C/C++ coder(s) who can tune into our packet layer and investigate few rather challenging bugs of evolved <-> M+ interaction, IMO, related to client and server diverging in some computations. But that's hell a lot to ask. I slightly digged in client (ManaPlus) and server (Evolved) packet layer and even fixed few bugs but I'm not a pro gamedev to easily take on rather unorthodox bugs like those I meant. Either way on my side I'd really like libre-minded ppl around. I miss them. If someone of them would be C/C++ "core wranglers" it would be dream. Well, guess most "real" gamedevs of this magnitude make k$ in megacorps.

[Livio]

Hello to everyone here at The Mana World !

Hi Sean!

Second, I did see there was bit of conflict in that thread (re - our invitation to the voice chat), regarding Libre / Open source and such. So I just wanted to point out that within our group, we have pretty much the whole bandwidth of opinions that were put forwards here in that thread (so - we trying to bridge different views, I guess you might say).

There's disagreement almost everywhere so I doubt peaceful threads make their way here. Maybe during events and contests...
Still, there's nothing wrong about it and different points of view are valuable. One problem, generally speaking, is the lack of knowledge when it comes to ethics in software. Some of us gets pissed off by people who ignore that, ignore licenses, install crap "cuz it workz", and click next, next, next...
I've been like that for a couple of decades and not even school didn't taught me why software have to be written with user freedom and respect in mind. So, that could turn into a topic that goes more on human values more than computers.

I'll be round (and I've promised Livio I'll try to actually join The Mana World game itself as well sooner or later), so looking forwards to replies!

I've never been so fond of RPG games honestly but this is the one I play most of the time. This game so coarse, unorganized, technically old and with a too complex client but can be amazing in many other ways thanks to its community.

I think you can certainly put me into that position yes. I'm a windows only user and use Paint.net (which I will promote when I get the chance ). The only border I have is blatant copyright violations.

With Windows closed no wonder why air got stale and stinks. I hope one day you get deep into understanding how going proprietary harms the user.

I believe in creating your own stuff and 'stealing' stuff with permission

That's means to a open or free license. As long the license of your tools allows the creation of free or open content...

EJ, I am a Mac user so I think I win the title of least purist by default

You won the title of who asked on a free software game forum what kind of proprietary device to buy as well.
viewtopic.php?t=20797&hilit=ipad
Have you found out who is the Korean spy?

Worse "conflicts" are IMO in other dimensions. One of worst probs: devs and players like 2 disintegrated subcommunities. Opposite of ideas I've met on libragaming IRC chans. Another would be "techies vs nontechies". In TMW nontechies won. Unfortunately it ruined delicate balance of light and darkness, made core coders dormant or driven away and things started heading weird scary directions.

Yeah, if you go around past threads you can see how some players get disappointed for not seeing new content implemented due to development reasons. Happened that someone contributed but got rejected: sometimes contribution needs some focused guidance or people will give up seeing their efforts being trashed. Some developers don't play the game so much as when they were players so it's hard to see players and development community bridged without problems especially with the less skilled ones.

Thart's a difference. Oh, I'd grant its weird idea to point gun and demand to be libre, but on other hand proprietary tools are often disgusting for opensourcers and it can drive plenty of capable ppl away.

I believe that the point is that humans are pleasure driven machines and any effort is not going to be pleasant unless there's a reason, an ideal, a strong will that enables even an underachiever to be the master of his own life.
The wish to learn, empower and protect itself and the community, to share years of knowledge, to resist trends and educate is nothing you can find on bored people downloading $4it from random internet sites because they are probably looking for compulsive entertainment. I was one of them: I downloaded tons of J2ME closed sources applications on $4itty mobile phones for years, I copied tons of CD games, I used proprietary firmwares and operating systems everywhere...
Guess what remains from decades of proprietary entertainment: Nothing but a bunch of trash. The few online communities I was in, died because some servers were proprietary and none got the source to bring them back somewhere else.
The problem is that without a decent awareness of how going proprietary actually exploits the people is hard to tell people what means to have software freedom.
As long they have fun while being abused they will love to be abused. A silly example? Why windows forces you to reboot your computer after an update? Why do you believe default basic telemetry is necessary and can't be disabled by user? Why the hell people click "next, next, next" without even reading? Because they want to have fun now or because their "friends" do the same? And people still want use that crap!
It's not about giving a direction but it's an invite to move and find your own way. To explore, share, and build something without strings attached. It took me years to understand and discover software freedom.

Either way on my side I'd really like libre-minded ppl around. I miss them. If someone of them would be C/C++ "core wranglers" it would be dream. Well, guess most "real" gamedevs of this magnitude make k$ in megacorps.

We gotta find some way to make megacorps less attractive and resist them. A pretty impossible task but still. TWM doesn't require extremely powerful computers and internet connections so you don't need to be rich to have fun with us. There's no elite or premium crap here.

[jesusalva]

By the way, please do not use weird symbols like $ to bypass the censor filter. Instead, go to user control panel and disable it.

Weird symbols make it unreadable for everyone, normal grammar allows people to decide if they want to see it or not.

(This existed since Crush's time and before)

As long they have fun while being abused they will love to be abused. A silly example? Why windows forces you to reboot your computer after an update? Why do you believe default basic telemetry is necessary and can't be disabled by user? Why the hell people click "next, next, next" without even reading? Because they want to have fun now or because their "friends" do the same? And people still want use that crap!

1. Because DOS is an old software and you can't upgrade it while running, unlike Canonical Livepatch. And other silly reasons. Money doesn't magically fix all problems, uh.

2, 3 and 4: Because in our society, no resource is more expensive than time. You'll waste time reading what "basic telemetry" means, so you just press next. You don't look for ethics, it'll take time to study and find alternatives.

There's only so much time you can use everyday, and software is still low on most people's priority list. Now that it grew to integrate so much of their life, governments started to protect this kind of people who don't have time to waste on that — privacy laws and such.

In the end, the truth is that time is limited and people spend it as they deem better, and most think software isn't worth spending time on, so they just pick whatever appears to give less headache at a first glance. Keyword first glance — if it is widely used, well advertised, etc. it likely fits the bill.

Even if anyone who tries both know Linux doesn't really give more headache than Windows nowadays. And that Windows wastes a lot of time on reboots, forced updates and such.
First Glance can be deceiving...

[Livio]

There's only so much time you can use everyday, and software is still low on most people's priority list. Now that it grew to integrate so much of their life, governments started to protect this kind of people who don't have time to waste on that — privacy laws and such.

This must be a joke. Otherwise many corporations would be prevented from operating.
Who controls who controls? If you don't understand what you use you are about to pay the price of your ignorance.

In the end, the truth is that time is limited and people spend it as they deem better, and most think software isn't worth spending time on, so they just pick whatever appears to give less headache at a first glance. Keyword first glance — if it is widely used, well advertised, etc. it likely fits the bill.

Yeah, the first glance. What actually made lot of people regret what they didn't know about they choose most of the time.
Camouflage is a natural way to fool preys. Something undetectable at first glance. That's why advertisers has the power to show a pair of handcuff looks cool and trendy by call them "iBracelets™". But even the crappiest ad requires time.
Without spare time and free software there will be no "The Mana World".

Even if anyone who tries both know Linux doesn't really give more headache than Windows nowadays. And that Windows wastes a lot of time on reboots, forced updates and such.
First Glance can be deceiving...

You can't compare a kernel against a proprietary operating system. We got hundreds of GNU/Linux distributions and not every of them is easier to setup compared to Windows. You may have issues with licenses and proprietary drivers as well, locked firmwares that prevents other OSes and even hardware from running (like some Lenovo laptops and ther WLAN NICs).
I'm not one of those who say that Ubuntu is better than windoz cuz linuz is c00l! Not anymore.