The Spring Thing website uses a complex system of code to run everything properly. I’ve decided to open source that code here:
I started this project around a year ago. I asked a couple of people to make sure I had scrubbed everything important like passwords and personal info, and no one ever reported any issues and I’ve removed everything I could think of. I’ve included a version of Aaron Reed’s Spring Thing playbook as a readme with, again, all private information redacted. If anyone finds anything that they believe should not be on this github page, let me know and I can remove it (even if I have to delete the whole repository).
For space issues, I’ve only included the code for one year’s worth of Spring Thing. Each year is essentially a copy of this repository. The older years (like 2003) are legacy code which I have not included. In the event that the Spring Thing website goes down, I believe those could be reconstructed from the wayback machine, but I’d be happy to archive the entire Spring Thing website if someone has suggestions. I have also not included any actual story games, as those are all included in the IFArchive.
Like others, I have been concerned about the ‘bus number’ for longstanding IF traditions (i.e. the number of people being hit by a bus that it would take to derail or eliminate a project). One step that’s been taken in recent years that I’ve been really happy with is replacing individual leaders with committees (like the IFTF and the IFDB admin team). It’s been harder to find new team mebers for some projects though, like Spring Thing, so I’m taking the step of open sourcing it, like I did with the IFDB awards. Like the IFDB awards, I’d like to establish a ‘Deadman’s switch’ for Spring Thing ownership. If April passes without the Spring Thing for that year having been announced, or if May passes without it being opened up to the public, I authorize the community to step in and take over Spring Thing (usually, it is announced in the preceding November and starts in April). A new organizer may change this rule, of course, but I’d like to keep it in place for now to ensure Spring Thing’s longevity.
The announcement for next year’s Spring Thing should come this week, I just need to update the dates and post the new AI rule that was discussed earlier in the year, and I’m prioritizing Ectocomp games over that. So you can assume it will be happening just as usual with no major changes to deadlines.