Support emulation projects: Difference between revisions
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|One of the developers of the [[Nucleus]] project.[https://youtu.be/4joCMfTPP4M?t=30] | |One of the developers of the [[Nucleus]] project.[https://youtu.be/4joCMfTPP4M?t=30] | ||
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!rowspan=" | !rowspan="2"|Rich Whitehouse | ||
|[[BigPEmu]] project. | |[[BigPEmu]] project. | ||
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|[https://old.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/1jkzg6y/funding_has_been_pulled_on_the_killer_instinct_12/ Killer Instinct 1+2 emulator project] | |||
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!rowspan="1"|Sarah Walker | !rowspan="1"|Sarah Walker | ||
Revision as of 14:55, 29 March 2025
There are several ways to support or contribute to an emulation project (or similar projects such as compatibility layers, game engine recreations, source ports or simulators). Explained here are different ways you can get involved, even if you have low technical skill and/or no money.
Note that almost all these methods require getting involved in some way. Offering to help in a specific area may not be necessary in some cases, so you'll have to check with each project you're interested in to determine what they're looking for and what they find useful.
Testing & bug reporting
One area you may be able to help in is reporting information, especially if you notice bugs in games that you play. This can be done a number of ways, but they all help the developer see where the emulator still has to improve.
Compatibility reporting
A compatibility report communicates the emulation quality. It is aimed at other users, and often consists of a compatibility list.
Some emulators use GitHub for their lists. Most projects have instructions on how they should be written. Make sure you search to see if any issues you're having has already been encountered by another user. Note that sending users to GitHub is dangerous - you should only do it if the project has a simplified compatibility list which doesn't require technical understanding / writing; most projects actually use wikis or custom tools / websites for compatibility reporting. Some use spreadsheets and forms to get their data.
Bug reporting
A bug report concerns one specific problem. It is aimed at emulator developers.
Because bug reports are meant for developers, they are expected to be more technical than a compatibility report. They're also typically expected to include details about specific situations when the problem arises, but also technical details as to why it happens. Developers also read compatibility reports and create respective bug reports themselves.
Sometimes you need a fair bit of experience in order to report bugs to the major projects. If you lack the experience to match what developers themselves report then most smaller projects are fine with it as long as you try to make it coherent and professional. Many projects have the program set up to automatically forward logs to developers at the user's discretion. This can avoid having to explain the problem, though sometimes they'll want context in case they need to reproduce it.
Generally you should chat to other developers / maintainers (via IRC or Discord) before creating a bug report. Often they are aware of issues and have grouped them under a known technical term.
Console verification
Despite being aimed at developers, users should read / follow bug reports they care about.
Many emulators not only need games tested in the emulator, but also on real hardware, because games aren't perfect. If you've been involved with the speedrunning community, you know bugs exist, and can be taken advantage of to get a faster time. Determining what is a bug in the game and what is inaccurate emulation can prevent developers from wasting time on problems they didn't create. All projects encounter this at some point; even the testers behind Dolphin encounter bugs that happen on hardware. Ideally, you should have a capture card for recording footage from hardware.
During the research and documentation phase, some developers will also write small programs to test hardware behavior. In some cases the developers don't have access to the physical hardware or they need to confirm results by having multiple users run the tests. This can also be done in cases where the code doesn't work on all hardware revisions, and the developer needs to test it on all revisions to understand where each model has deficiencies; sometimes they don't have all models, but the more accuracy-focused projects will have this covered in some way. Hackers and those in the homebrew scene may have documented these deficiencies already. You can follow developer chat-rooms, and offer assistance by running tests and collecting data from real hardware.
Providing support for end users
Helping and guiding other users through problems is one of the pillars of open communities. If there's one thing a developer doesn't want to have to do alone, it's troubleshoot problems that end users get themselves into. Providing support for end-users will allow developers to focus on the software they make, creating a filter that allows actual bugs to be reported and saving time in the process. You also need a slight sense of confidence to make decisions for the user. For most people who work in IT (or just Google their problems), this comes naturally.
Support can be provided on a Discord server, IRC server, or a project's forums.
Outreach & promotion
Outreach and promotion is an important factor in the success of an emulator because it gets people talking about it, especially emulators for newer consoles that make strides in their efforts regularly.
This can be done by writing official blog posts, posting news on social media, providing information, making videos for YouTube, explaining and summarizing change logs, etc.
Archival & hardware donations
Optical discs like CD and DVDs have a limited lifespan. They degrade over time and will eventually be unreadable to a disc reader. Projects like No-Intro and Redump are focused on identifying all officially released carts and discs, respectively. Each known cart/disc is stored with information which makes it possible for users to verify the correctness of their cart/disc. Contributing to these databases (by dumping your cart/disc and contributing metadata) helps to build a full-set for testing emulators. It also encourages users to make legal backups of their carts/discs before they break.
Game databases like MobyGames can be used to find additional information for each game. Launchers can use the uploaded descriptions and cover artwork. You can contribute by scanning your game artwork, finding and adding game information (such as release dates). MobyGames also stores barcodes and serial numbers which can be used to find releases in Redump's database. You can look at the existing cover artwork and extract such information.
You can donate games or hardware to developers or other volunteers who are accepting such donations. Donated games can then be analyzed by the recipient and their information can be added to databases such as those listed above. Emulator developers usually require a large number of consoles, games, and peripherals (controllers, memory cards, ..), so donations are typically welcome. Depending on the project structure these will be forwarded to people who are in need of such hardware. Contact project maintainers to find out what they accept.
Help with technical documentation
Emulators depend on technical documentation about the systems they emulate. Typically, there are dedicated communities (often including people from the homebrew scene, and much less commonly the piracy and warez scene) for these research and documentation tasks.
These research communities often uses wikis that need to be maintained. Beginners can help by fixing typos or formatting. For some of these tasks, no coding skills are required. Advanced users and developers can contribute their own research, or participate in technical discussions.
Many of these communities also maintain their own tools which can be helpful for ROM dumping or testing emulation. These tools are often written in beginner-friendly programming languages (such as C# or Python) and can be stepping-stone for moving towards actual emulator development.
Communities
Learn how to code and help out
A pretty obvious one, but it should be stated that most open-source emulation projects don't get nearly enough support in the programming area. Bigger projects often have an abundance of developers to constantly check on the code and make sure it's written well, but those are rare, so most projects are often one man operations or have few (if multiple) developers. Many projects are actively looking for programmers, so if you have knowledge in systems programming and such, you could definitely be of help.
Programming for the emulator itself isn't even necessary, as many projects are in need of websites and continuous integration (CI). If the emulator doesn't use stable builds (or all that exists are instructions for compiling from source), you could implement CI and integrate it with the website so it can host precompiled builds for users. Continuous integration is also useful because it can run the program with test ROMs to ensure that compatibility isn't broken between commits. The major projects will have this covered. Sometimes older project developers don't like to change the website's infrastructure, so you're better off handling projects for which there is no existing website.
Porting, typically adding new operating system support, sometimes as large as a entirely separate class of devices. This can be difficult it greatly increases the possible systems that the emulator can run on. If you're experience with Linux, you can help port a program to it, your distro (Like Debian) or your favorite packing format (like AppImages).
Maintaining or Fixing code, while this can be active development with refactoring of code it can also be re-writing or fixing lines of code, such as minor inaccuracies, off-by-one errors and other small errors not noticed by the developers.
Donate money
Emulator development is a time-intensive task. A lot of projects could use some money, especially ones where they often don't get it when they should. Some projects are simply possible because the developers have money from their existing job to be able to fund their efforts on the emulator. Sometimes it goes a long way in helping archivists on the team hunt for rare items.
Many projects are often a group effort, so from a user's perspective there's no fair way to distribute what comes in. Often developers of emulators can only do their work because research has been done by other people - unfortunately, that work often goes unrewarded. It's therefore important to understand who you donate to, and how that money will be shared and used among the group. Make sure developers are upfront about who gets paid and what they're using your donations for. More informal ones will say they use the donations on a beer or coffee, but it's also often put towards project operations like domain registration for the website and such to keep the website running.
Some problems may arise from this; money can potentially be a deterrent for newcomers on open-source projects. By only supporting the core developer group, it might actively discourage other contributors because the reward system would be unfair. ("Why do I have to work for free when x is getting paid on a monthly basis?") This can quickly lead to one "hero" developer - if they ever disappear, the project essentially dies because nobody else is familiar with the source code. Some projects have countered this by implementing a bounty system, where newcomers can be rewarded for fixing bugs that are outside the scope of what the core developers focus on. Keep in mind that even in the hundreds of dollars, a bounty isn't going to pay the developer's bills, but it's a better incentive than otherwise.
For some projects, there is no practical use for money: money doesn't write code. There's also a lot of free services for open-source projects, so many projects don't have any expenses.
Monetary donations
There are several emulators that support donations, some emulators have Patreons, PayPal addresses and such on their homepages.
Big projects
Note that this list is only intended to provide examples of ways to help out/getting involved, so we only list major examples.
Has a contributing page and you can submit bug reports to MAME Testers.
It's not possible to donate money directly to MAME, but several other projects that help MAME's development by dumping and decapping ROMs can be supported. See this Reddit post by a MAME developer for more info.
- The Dumping Union - Accepts donations from PayPal.
- Team Europe - Accepts donations from PayPal. See info here on how to donate.
- CAPS0ff - Has a Patreon.
The libretro Team has
- A contribute page with wish lists for hardware and other info.
- A Patreon.
- A BountySource system where you can donate money directly to features, bugfixes, and improvements you'd wish to see.
The ScummVM Team has
- A PayPal.
- A bug tracker.
- A translation portal.
- A Developer Central page with instructions on how to contribute code.
The Wine Team has a Donate page where you can find information on how to donate with PayPal and other ways to send money. You can also support them by buying merchandise.
Another option is to buy CrossOver which is a commercialized, supported version of Wine from CodeWeavers. They contribute all of their work on CrossOvers back to Wine and make up about two thirds of the commits made to Wine.
Patreon is a service that allows fans to contribute to creators' projects on a recurring basis (where they're known as patrons). A ton of emulator developers are already using it so if you wish to support any project with money, we've listed the accounts below. We also have a page on other ways to support emulation projects.
Emulators
| Name | System(s) | Sponsorship links | License | Early access | Other rewards |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yaba Sanshiro (Yaba) | Saturn | devmiyax liberapay |
GPLv2 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Patron-only posts and messages |
| BigPEmu | Jaguar | richwhitehouse | Proprietary | ✓ | Discord, credits/homages in author's all solo work |
| Delta | Multi-system | rileytestut | AGPLv3 (Copyleft) | ✓ | iPad and SEGA Genesis support in Delta, 3rd party sources in AltStore, QOL improvements and bug fixes, Interaction with developers and community, active support from dedicated channels, providing feedback on upcoming features |
| Provenance | Multi-system | provenance GitHub Sponsor Open Collective Author's Amazon wishlist |
BSD-3-Clause (Permissive) | ✗ | Discord, Bug fix requests, Feature requests, Cloud saves, Patron shout-out, Cloud ROMs, and ISOs, Phone call, Digital comissions, Dedicated feature development (2 hours of time). |
| 86Box | x86 CPUs | 86box, PayPal | GPLv2 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Name in YouTube videos, and on website. Priority video requests. |
| AetherSX2 | PlayStation 2 | aethersx2 | Proprietary | ✗ | ✗ |
| Cemu | Wii U | cemu | MPL 2.0 (Copyleft) | ✓ | Discord, exclusive news, name in emulator |
| Citra | Nintendo 3DS | citraemu | GPLv2 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Discord, exclusive news, technical support, development polls |
| Cxbx-Reloaded, ares | Xbox, Sega Chihiro (Arcade, WIP), Nintendo 64 | LukeUsher, Ko-fi GitHub Sponsor, PayPal |
GPLv2 (Copyleft) ISC (Permissive) |
✗ | Exclusive news, name in emulator |
| DobieStation | PlayStation 2 | dobiestation | GPLv3 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Discord |
| libretro | Multi-system | libretro | ? | ✗ | Discord |
| simple64 | Nintendo 64 | loganmc10 | GPLv3 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Exclusive news |
| melonDS | Nintendo DS | Arisotura (formerly Staplebutter) | GPLv3 (Copyleft) | ✗ | ✗ |
| Mesen | Nintendo NES | Mesen | GPLv3 (Copyleft) | ✗ | ✗ |
| mGBA | Nintendo GBA, GB, GBC | mgba | MPL 2.0 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Special icon, name in emulator |
| Mikage | Nintendo 3DS | mikage | TBD | ✗ | Exclusive news, technical support |
| NooDS | Nintendo DS | Hydr8gon | GPLv3 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Discord |
| Nova | Sega Saturn, Sega Titan Video (Arcade) | nova_emu | Proprietary | ✓ | Exclusive news, name in emulator |
| Planet Virtual Boy emulator | Virtual Boy | GuyPerfect | zlib License (Permissive) | ✗ | ✗ |
| Play! | PlayStation 2 | jpd002 GitHub Sponsor |
BSD-2-Clause (Permissive) | ✗ | Discord |
| PCBox | x86 CPUs | qeegmfer | GPLv2 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Discord, technical support |
| OpenEmu | Multi-system | openemu Cash App Bitcoin BitcoinCash |
? | ✓ | Name in emulator |
| Orbital | PlayStation 4 | AlexAltea | MIT (Permissive) | ✗ | Discord, exclusive news |
| Project64 | Nintendo 64 | Project64 | GPLv2 (Copyleft) | ✓ | Remove prompts for support |
| Retro Virtual Machine | ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC | retrovirtualmachine | Proprietary | ✓ | Exclusive news, name in emulator |
| RPCS3 | PlayStation 3 | Nekotekina Alipay |
GPLv2 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Discord, exclusive news, technical support, development polls, name in emulator |
| Ryujinx | Nintendo Switch | ryujinx | MIT (Permissive) | ✗ | Discord |
| StrikeBox | Xbox | StrikerX3 | BSD-2-Clause (Permissive) | ✗ | Exclusive news |
| TeknoParrot | Windows-based Arcade systems | Teknogods | Proprietary | ✓ | Exclusive emulator features, Discord, exclusive news |
| Vita3K | PlayStation Vita | Vita3K | GPLv2 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Discord, name in readme, higher priority on reported issues |
| xemu | Xbox | mborgerson | GPLv2 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Name on videos |
| Xenia | Xbox 360 | xenia_project gibbed GitHub Sponsor (gibbed) GitHub Sponsor (JoelLinn) GitHub Sponsor (Razzile) |
BSD-3-Clause (Permissive) | ✗ | Discord |
| Yabause | Sega Saturn | yabause | GPLv2 (Copyleft) | ✗ | Name in emulator, documentation, support |
Misc
| Name | Description | Sponsorship links | Rewards |
|---|---|---|---|
| anodium | Citra progress report and blog writer | anodium | ✗ |
| CAPS0ff | Chip decapping, currently used for improving MAME's emulation. | 4805718 | Chance to influence what they work on, early blog posts. |
| EmuVR | Game room simulation in VR. | EmuVR | Exclusive news. |
| GLideN64 | One of the more popular N64 plugins. | Gliden64 | Early access, exclusive news. |
| InternalLoss (AKA 'Billy' UK) | Insignia server (For Xbox games), open-source web tools, OS network services for retro game systems. | billy549 (Ko-fi) | ✗ |
| JayFoxRox | XQEMU, Citra, Sega Lindbergh, pinball emulation, open-source PC game ports. | jayfoxrox | ✗ |
| Lioncache | Core developer on Dolphin, Citra and yuzu. | 9377665 | Monthly cat photos. |
| Libbers (AKA 'Libby') | Insignia server for Xbox games. Twitter. | LibbyLoops | ✗ |
| Lutris | An open-source frontend for Linux. | lutris | Early access, remote support with a desktop sharing program, custom forum badge. |
| m4xw | Works on improving various emulators, such as Mupen64Plus, Mupen64Plus-Next, RetroArch libnx port, Switch PPSSPP Port. Also makes Nintendo Switch homebrew. | m4xwdev | Discord, feature requests. |
| Martin Korth | Developer of the No$ emulators. | martin_korth | ✗ |
| MooglyGuy/TheMogMiner | Assist with expenses in acquiring obscure computers and electronic hardware for MAME's emulation. | moogly | Patreon posts |
| Playnite | An open-source frontend for Windows. | playnite | Early access, access to polls prioritizing upcoming features, credits. |
| Silent (AKA 'CookiePLMonster') | Occasional contributions to Xenia, RPCS3, Cxbx-Reloaded; unofficial patches/enhancements for PC games & some old console games; other mods for Grand Theft Auto games. | CookiePLMonster | Patreon posts, credits, access to private to-do list. |
| thrimbor | Insignia server (For Xbox games), Xbox original tools, various fixes/mods to open-source projects and games/software. Twitter. | StefanSchmidt | ✗ |
| Wine-Staging | Testing area and experimental features for Wine. | winestaging | ✗ |
| Zophar's Domain | Emulation/game data archival website. | zophar | Ad-free, your own post, link to your emulation project. |
| Tuxality | Developing Infuse (Zeebo and BREW emulator) and PowerVR SGL wrapper | Tuxality | ✗ |
Romhacking
| Name | Description | Sponsorship links | Rewards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hilltop | Localizations of Japanese-only videogames (Especially PS1 & PS2) titles. | hilltopworks | Patron-only Discord room, patron role, exclusive posts, early access to content, BTS developer info, answers to romhacking questions, patch credits. |
| ROMhacking.net | Rom hacking website. The biggest(?) database of rom hacks and translations. | Romhackingnet | Site themes, site development forum, ad-free, sticky article, new site feature or improvement of your choosing. |
| Name | Description | Sponsorship links | Rewards |
|---|---|---|---|
| atrac17 | Fixes to arcade FPGA cores for MiSTer and others, MAME contributor. | atrac17 | Private posts |
| José Manuel Barroso Galindo | Maintains the old Update_All_MiSTer script and newer, improved MiSTer Downloader for MiSTer FPGA. | theypsilon | Early access, private posts, Patreon keys, Discord benefits, shout-outs, chance to influence what he works on. |
| Jose Tejada | Arcade FPGA cores for MiSTer and others, MAME contributor. | topapate | Early access, private posts, name/face in projects, chance to influence what he works on. |
| MiSTer | Open source FPGA project targeted to replicate retro computers, consoles and similar devices using modern USB input devices and output high quality video to HDMI. | FPGAMiSTer PayPal |
✗ |
| RetroRGB.com | A website with corresponding YouTube, Podcast and social media accounts dedicated to highlighting the people and projects in the retro gaming scene (particularly FPGA scene too). | retrorgb, Floatplane, Ko-fi, PayPal, Others | Early access, private posts, Discord. |
| Robert Peip | Development and enhancements to console FPGA cores for MiSTer and others. Best known for creating PSX core. Also made Atari Lynx, GBA & Wonderswan cores, and added improvements to other cores. Check his Twitter updates, too. | FPGAzumSpass | Early access, private posts. |
| Sergey Dvodnenko | Console FPGA cores for MiSTer and others. Best known for creating Saturn core. Also did major work on Sega Genesis, Mega CD & TurboGrafx-16/CD. Check his Twitter, too. | srg320 | ✗ |
| Name | Games | Description | Sponsorship links | Rewards |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenMW | TES 3: Morrowind | List of several individual devs. | Several devs | ✗ |
| ReC98 | Touhou 1 - 5 (PC-98) | Updated page with many completion status bars needing certain amounts. | GitHub Sponsors (Progress bars) | ✗ |
Video game preservation
| Name | Description | Sponsorship links | Rewards | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| classicrebirth.com (The Apple of Eden) | Plug & play enhancements for classic Resident Evil and Dino Crisis games on modern Windows (i.e. Vista+). | classicrebirth | Private posts, full patches collection, early access, in-game credit. | ||||
| HG101 | Comprehensive web overviews/retrospectives, ebooks/books and podcasts of retro/modern video games. | hg101 | Private posts, private messages, Discord, ebooks/books (also autographic option), materials, votes/nominations. | ||||
| Hit Save! | A non-profit dedicated to video game preservation, their history, and related physical and digital materials. | hitsave, Ghost, Others | Private posts, messages, polls, Discord, early access content, credit, memorabilia. | ||||
| Home of the Underdogs | A non-profit site dedicated to the preservation and promotion of 5000+ underrated PC games (and a few non-PC games) of all ages, 1000+ documents. Includes game info, reviews, media, download/purchase links. Old versions with game/docs downloads ended in 2009. | hotu | Discord. | ||||
| Unseen64 | An historical archive with articles, screenshots and videos for cancelled, beta & unseen videogames. Full U64 backup on Archive.org. | unseen64 | Private posts, polls, credit in posts, ebook. | ||||
| Axed | |||||||
| The Video Game Preservation Collective (VGPC) | Video game preservation. Contributes to redump.org, No-Intro and Internet Archive. | vgpc | Name on website | ||||
- External links
- Graphtreon - View a project's Patreon earnings, statistics, graphs and rankings.
Notable projects and people
This section is for relevant/notable emulation projects and people who are part of them.
- Platforms that need attention
- Main article: Category:Partially emulated
- There are several systems that require more attention from the emulation community. While multiple emulators may exist, none of them appear particularly promising.
- Philips CD-i — No existing emulator fully supports CD-i games with full motion video due to the absence of DVC emulation. Implementing DVC emulation would significantly enhance CD-i emulation compatibility, and also enabling proper/full support for CD-i Digital Video and Video CD 1.1 on PCs as well.
- Pioneer LaserActive
- Gizmondo
- Apple iPod
- PlayStation Mobile
- GP2X, GP2X Wiz
- Pokitto
- Zeebo
- Thumby
- XBLIG
- Apple Pippin
- Super A'Can
- Windows XP
- Promising projects
- There are several promising projects in active development — currently in a highly incomplete state with limited compatibility and with a basic user interface.
- EKA2L1
- touchHLE
- Xenia, Xenia Canary, Xenia Netplay and Xenon
- shadPS4 and RPCSX
- WinDurango and XWine1
- Infuse
- SquirrelJME
- Rapier
- Nuance
- SnowPME
- DingusPPC
- Genymotion
- libevmu
- Delayed dreams
- While more mature than 'promising projects', these are still don't reach the level of 'most impressive' projects.
- SameBoy: Lack of Game Boy (Color) hardware feature implementations.
- mGBA: Lack of Game Boy Advance hardware feature implementations.
- GBE+: Lack of enhancement features.
- melonDS (DS): Lack of DS hardware feature implementations and enhancement features.
- PPSSPP: Lack of PSP hardware feature implementations.
- ares: Limited support for fifth-gen+ systems and lack of enhancement features.
- Mesen: While this multi-emulator is "Most impressive" level for systems like NES which offers most of it's hardware features and various enhancement features, emulation of other systems is not yet at the same level.
- xemu: Compatibility level, Lack of enhancement features, certain titles may demand significant CPU single-thread performance.
- Cemu: Compatibility level, lack of enhancement features.
- RPCS3: Compatibility level, hardware feature support is "not quite there yet" and lack of enhancements support, highly CPU-intensive especially for titles that heavily utilize the SPU.
- Vita3K: Compatibility level, lack of Vita hardware feature implementations and enhancement features.
- 86Box: Lack of ACPI PC hardware support implementations and enhancement features.
- J2ME Loader and FreeJ2ME (Plus and fork): Lack of enhancement features such as save states.
- Most impressive
- State-of-the-art projects, excellent compatibility levels, robust hardware feature and peripheral support, and comprehensive enhancement support.
- MAME
- BigPEmu
- Stella
- Flycast
- DuckStation: Even though hardware feature support is "not quite there yet", compatibility level and enhancement support is excellent.
- PCSX2: Even though hardware feature support is "not quite there yet", compatibility level and enhancement support is excellent.
- Dolphin
- Historic emulators
- see History of emulation for more early emulators.
- These are not the most impressive/used emulators now, but were famous and/or revolutionary at one point.
People in the emulation and related scenes
This dedicated section celebrates the prominent figures in the emulation scene, giving a heartfelt round of applause to the developers who enrich our lives. A huge thanks to every hardworking soul who has contributed to emulation projects over the years—whether you’re still active or a past contributor, your efforts are deeply appreciated. When a game doesn’t work as expected or a feature you prioritize isn’t implemented, remember that the dev team may have different priorities or face technical challenges. Instead of attacking, consider expressing your appreciation for their hard work and dedication, perhaps by offering constructive feedback or support. These hobby projects are fueled by the passion and knowledge of individuals who volunteer their precious time for free. Even those who test, report bugs, maintain compatibility lists, or moderate forums dedicate countless hours to support these projects and their communities. These are real people—treat them with the kindness and respect you’d want in return.
- External links