Repo Organization
As an open source project, the Pinball Map code is on Github. Until now, though, the repositories for each component (website, blog, app) have always resided on various personal Github accounts. This might be confusing to people who want to contribute (e.g., they don’t seem “official”, or they’re hard to find). So, now we’ve created a Github “organization” named Pinball Map and put all the repos on it. The inactive repos - old blog, old Android app, old iOS app - are marked as “Archived” and will no longer accept contributions.
The active repos are:
- https://github.com/pinballmap/pbm (the website - which is a Ruby on Rails app and includes the API)
- https://github.com/pinballmap/pbm-react (the mobile app - which uses React Native)
We hope this helps clarify which repositories power Pinball Map.
Please note that our capacities to develop ebb and flow with the times. We always welcome contributions from others. If you are wondering where to get started, check out the website “Issues” that are marked as “Help Needed.” These are generally issues that have been around for a little while, and are good ideas, but we don’t expect to have much capacity to work on them in the near-future.
Pinball Map Data
On another note, while the code for the website and app are open source and are under the GPL v3.0 license, the license for using the data that is accessible via the API might not be clear to everyone. If your service has pulled data from Pinball Map, it should include attribution. For the most part, the many services that have used our data over the years have been great about this, because they recognize that Pinball Map is a good resource. However, we recently noticed an arcade map website that “grew overnight” to over 5,000 location listings, and this growth was the result of them pulling our data. Their map does not include game listings. And in general, their site adds practically nothing that we do not offer (most other projects – such as Scorbit and Pindigo – use our data in order to provide a new service or functionality). These folks just took our data and made another map, and they do not have any attribution and they are pretending that they’re a community-driven service. They are bad actors who don’t seem to care that this data is the hard work of thousands of people.
We added this info to the FAQ:
Can I use Pinball Map data on my own site?
You can use our public API to fetch data and use it for your app. When using Pinball Map data, you must include attribution and a link back to this site. If you need bulk data for a project, please get in touch. We have collaborated with many folks on their projects, from student projects to services by major pinball companies. Please do not just scrape large amounts of this site for your own arcade/pinball mapping site, with no attribution. Thousands of people have been contributing their time and effort to this site since 2008.