October 19, 2016
Today, the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) announced that it will release an open-source project for its new games data management software, BoutTime. Through this initiative, the WFTDA aims to bring better standards and practices to games data software and to instill ownership of that software with the wider roller derby community. WFTDA is releasing BoutTime under the new WFTDA Software License, modeled after the Apache 2.0 License, to engage the development community and push electronic tracking into a wider market.
Open-sourcing BoutTime offers another way for participants to help build the future of our sport, resulting in a product that meets the needs of roller derby leagues around the world. The WFTDA believes that this project could spark a movement of innovation and collaboration in technology investments in roller derby.
BoutTime was built with a mobile-first focus while also keeping functionality for desktop devices in mind. The basic design philosophy emphasizes flexibility and a robust data format. BoutTime can be used for individual tracking positions or a full game day roster of positions. At its core is the data format DerbyJSON (based on DerbyOS/DerbyXML created by Glenn “theMadStatter” Andreas), an open format that will allow data collected during a game to be used in various applications, as well as the WFTDA’s forthcoming Stats Repository.
Under this new license, individuals will be allowed to make and share changes as long as those changes are clearly stated and included along with the original license and copyright. As with many software licenses, the WFTDA is not liable for damages or defects associated with use of the software. While the software is not protected by trademark itself, all included trademarked assets (e.g. the WFTDA logo) are subject to their usual protections and restrictions.
Currently, the software is considered an alpha release, so regular installations are discouraged in favor of local development installs. For more information, read the README file in BoutTime.
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