Do we need a standalone Libre/OpenSource Game-Store/Hub ??? (similar to Athenaeum)
where we simply aggregate all the FOSS games in one place along with their mods & links to their assets (Plus methods to fund those libre-gamedevs)
I think flathub pretty much does this.
That does provide a delivery mechanism, but misses out on the community that is suggested by OP.
Dang, I completely missed that. Time to go to sleep. Good night!
Atheneaum was one such game-store & it utilized FlatPaks
Technically itch.io is afaik FOSS, but it doesn't cater to open-source games exclusively.
The Libregaming.org community has brainstormed quite extensively about what you propose and some of it is summarized here: https://libregaming.org/reports/game-launcher-concept/ (partially outdated by now)
Personally I think a fork of the Heroic Games launcher could be a good base for such a game store.
Absolutely not, because the concept itself doesn't make any damn sense. A service that aggregates a bunch of Free Software in one place is called a "repository," not a "store!"
The framing of issues is important, and to cede control of that framing to proprietary software publishers by adopting their terminology would be a mistake.
I guess it depends on the meaning of "store" maybe if it is like a stock room?
The key is that describing a Free Software repository as a "store" is a bad idea because not being a store is what makes it categorically superior to all stores.
Ok then, how about a "Hub" ?
Much better!
If only there was some mechanism to encourage developers to make games free at least after making some profit/payback. With such a mechanism, the store could develop financially. But personally, I haven't come up with anything like that yet.
Maybe a new type of FOSS licence ? Or just plain-ol guilt-tripping
Wasn't that the intention of having copyright last only 13-15 years? That the works would enter the public domain, free for all to play with? Just because it is a digital good doesn't mean this shouldn't apply.
Unfortunately our government has been purchased by the 1% with the surplus labor value stolen from us. We are getting taxed without representation.
I mean anyone can make a proprietary game and then put it under an open source license later. Its why people push companies to do this if they are going to abandon the game. One problem is sometimes they are fine with the game but they want to use the ip in succeeding games so the ip has to be stripped out.
Yes, I hadn't thought about such motivation. In this case, maybe it is possible to at least release only the code under an open/free license.
and that is sorta what happens. I think doom is like this.
We already have an appstore for Linux, it's built in and a gui is all one needs, along side methods of putting paid and proprietary apps in too
But, android is lacking, f-droid has no such capability and I don't think you can put proprietary apps in
Well, uh
There's at least a dozen, not all have a GUI, very few of them have payment mechanisms. There's so much variety that I cannot with confidence place which one you're referring to. Maybe Gnome Software? Dpkg can technically do it but it's on the maintainer to build in the mechanism to phone home to a third-party server and allow/deny functionality based on payment status.
Rereading your post, I think you might have meant that paid and proprietary deployment methods are needed, but proprietary packages are very much already a thing, and the reason that Ubuntu gained so much headway over Debian, in that they assume you do in fact want your wireless card to work. They're also the ones with the esm payment mechanisms, where they can turn off repository channels if you cancel your plan.