It's cool to see the competition is coming to shape!
Regarding to the last rules set, I really love that there will be a theme so all the entries are "unified" or have something in common besides being SNES games. I think the timeframe (4 months from June to September) is perfect. It's long enough to have large entries with dedicated teams, and to also attract smaller entries from solo devs who will be able to work only during summer vacations for example.
For the open-source part, I really love when homebrew games are open-sourced for learning purposes, and I do it myself sometimes too (when I take time to clean and comment code
). But I don't think we should enforce it or even reward it during judging, in order to avoid detracting people from entering. I mean, while enforcing open-source is not a an issue for a 48h or 72h game jam, I can understand how it can be off-putting for a 4 months project using personal libraries that are not open-sourced (as previously mentioned in this thread). Also, this is only the first competition/Jam, rules could evolve for the next ones.
I'm really looking towards the final forum thread / official site / announcement so we can share the word and hopefully attract a lot for fellow developers!