Week 11, day 1 at RC

Early this morning, I enjoyed a lively discussion with Nat about FLOSS¹ and how to practise your principles. Unlike myself, Nat is very familiar with video games (playing and developing them). Unfortunately, video games are typically not made out of FLOSS. Nat clarified for me that there are two parts in a video game’s codebase:

• the static content (art) vs
• the compiled code (functionality).

The first part is virtually never free culture, but let us not worry about this (at least for now). In the free software perspective, free culture is an option, not a requirement. It is interesting to find games at the intersection of art and code, culture and software, aesthetics and functionality. We can then consider them through the prism of cultural heritage and cultural diversity. I will remember this when I finally get back to collaborating with my sister on the Digital Commons and we write Part II.

The second part (compiled code) is proprietary for all the popular games but, apparently, there are some high-profile examples of successful retro-engineering (i.e., where communities of contributors flourish and vendors let them be). Nat is one of these contributors. With all her technical abilities and ethical convictions, she has been trying to set up a fully FLOSS development environment.

We focused on the issue of emotional hardships! Let me report on it tomorrow, I have to run right now.