Board Meeting Minutes

By: MonoGame Foundation Nov 29, 2023
foundation

Attendee's

  • Dean Ellis - President
  • Dominique Louis - Treasurer
  • Simon Jackson - Corporate Secretary
  • Tom Spilman - Banking Matters
  • Marko Jeremic - Board Chairman
  • Thomas Altenburger - Board Member

Agenda

  • Funding discussions and the plans to offer funding support to community investments and work.
  • Initial discussion on which issues the MonoGame Foundation would like to fund first.
  • Technology highlights:
    • Microsoft GDKX / GDK Support.
    • Native AOT.
    • Vulkan Support for desktop and mobile platforms.
    • DX12.
    • Move dependencies within MonoGame for dedicated support, e.g.FAudio and FreeImage.
  • Restoration of Unit Tests for Windows and Mac, including Graphical tests.
  • Review of current Documentation / Tutorials estate and how to do better.
  • New Content design and build Support.
  • Upgrading to DotNet 8 and the move away from DotNet 6.

Outcomes

This has been a heavy week for discussions, debates and some real outcomes that will directly benefit all MonoGame Developers. The foundation has really listened to the community and driven the key priorities needed to move MonoGame forward in the immediate future, with definitive roadmap for ongoing development.

Here is a summary of the outcomes from our week long debate:

  • Funding will be international and the MonoGame Foundation has setup an account with Wise for international payments. PayPal will be available as a last resort should developers have issues receiving funds.
  • A schedule for contracts (or Issue Bounties) will be drawn up over the next few weeks/months to support necessary developments (although still the Foundation is offering their services freely to get critical tasks moving), more on this space later.
  • An overall proposal format will be drafted for any bounties to be offered to paid work for the Foundation. Principle rule is that no one "profits" from work, the funds are there to help support the work to be completed.
  • The RoadMap, work has begun in earnest and a formal roadmap will be published soon, but here are the highlights for the 3.X cycle:
    • Native AOT support for cross platform builds.
    • The addition of Vulkan support (which will also provide Metal support) for desktop and mobile platforms. (see This issue for details.)
    • Update Xbox platform for DX 12 and GDKX support (with plans to bring DX12 to Windows once complete).
    • Unite the Native API for MonoGame for all platforms, to make maintenance and new platforms easier.
  • The content pipeline overhaul - Following increasing feedback regarding the Content Pipeline, work has begun to improve the flow and management of content without affecting existing projects operation, details to follow.
  • Dependencies - The intention is to bring the building of ALL dependencies under MonoGame control, this will improve the overall reliability of components that MonoGame is heavily dependent on.
  • Documentation overhaul - Updating, migrating and improving the MonoGame Documentation is a high priority for 3.x, currently under review by Simon Jackson and Dean Ellis. Support will be welcome by the community is centralising official documentation.
  • DotNet 8 upgrade plans - the next release of MonoGame (provisionally 3.9) will be upgraded to DotNet 8 to accelerate and enable other improvements to the MonoGame Framework. This should cause NO breaking changes to existing projects, and if anything, offer a speed boots due to DotNet 8 compilation and runtime. For those wanting to remain on DotNet 6, then you will have to remain on MG 3.8.
  • The first bug bounty has been released, but is only available to Xbox users as it relies on existing Xbox NDA's and access to DirectX12/GDKX access from Microsoft. Please check the MonoGame Native access discord/GitHub repo if you have access for the details. Funding is offered if required.

Exciting times

Encouraged by public support and the funding from our partners and community, the MonoGame Foundation is racing ahead with new vigor to deliver on MonoGame's promise of a Build Once and SHip everywhere framework.

P.S. Super top-secret, Swag and other merchandise is being discussed with the hopes of hosting our first community engagement!