The Libretro Team and other emulators are being ripped off by companies trying to make a quick buck

I know the pain. I lately made one of our software vendors aware that they're not allowed to use certain things in their product without opensourcing the changes made under the very same license.

They were not even aware of that, nor did they bother initially. In the end they gave way, and rewrote the whole product from scratch themselves without the license violations.

I've been working on Stella (an Atari 2600 emulator) for almost 18 years at the point.

I used Stella a few times. I have to say it is a nice experience, as it is refreshingly different, has a nice GUI, is easy to set up and just works. Thanks for the work, man!

I'm not in the least surprised.
It is the natural and logical result of open source licenses and nobody enforcing them around the globe.
There is a point to be made about closed source software.

If there is no repercussion to doing illegal things, there is no reason not to do them.

Ah, now, I can hear you say:
Because it would be "wrong"!

And to that I say:
Did you ever meet a human being? Morals are a ground so thin it is impossible to base anything on them.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 21 Dec 2017 at 11:38 am UTC

It is the natural and logical result of open source licenses and nobody enforcing them around the globe.

That's not true, open source licences are enforced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IfrOSS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Freedom_Law_Center
Maybe one of these can help the emulator teams as well?

Yeah, it's quite nasty when commercial projects just use FOSS as their base, and never contribute anything back or support original developers.

But it is legal as long as they comply with the licence and credit the code used and its respective developers (like zlib , ogg, vorbis etc. licenses). One is not obliged to bundle the code print with the device, only to provide the code on demand.

Just today I was pondering on whether GOG, Nightdive and others keen on packaging old games with ScummVM and selling them for a fine buck actually contribute to the project themselves. With lots of new games added to ScummVM recently, I certainly hope so, but somehow I doubt it at the same time...

Fully agree.

It makes them so easy to monetize old products again,
so they should at least contribute a fractional amount
of revenues back to the projects they use.
Otherwise, it might be legal but unethical.

It's not just the great ScummVM.
Also DOSBox.

What else projects, btw?


Last edited by sub on 21 Dec 2017 at 12:16 pm UTC

If there is no repercussion to doing illegal things, there is no reason not to do them.

Ah, now, I can hear you say:
Because it would be "wrong"!

And to that I say:
Did you ever meet a human being? Morals are a ground so thin it is impossible to base anything on them.

Of course it's possible to base things on morals. It's just not for everyone. Not everyone is the same, and there are people who don't have conscience - literally. For those, there literally is no reason to not do something like this.

There's another side to this mess too. Although people are taking RetroArch and not properly acknowledging its contributions, even fewer people are acknowledging the emulators themselves. That is, even when someone knows and respects what RetroArch is doing, they don't know (or often care) about the emulators behind the scenes.

I've been working on Stella (an Atari 2600 emulator) for almost 18 years at the point. Stella is considered the 'gold standard' for 2600 emulation, but I would bet that most people using RetroArch aren't even aware that the work done for this isn't being done by Lakka, or RetroArch, but by the Stella developers. There are only a few of us, and only one (myself) that has stayed with it so long over the years. And aside from a few small contributions here and there, we receive nothing.

I've even been contacted by companies asking me to port the latest version of Stella to RetroArch so they can use it in their product!

Not to disrespect the work that RetroArch does, but even if they do get the recognition they deserve, I'll bet that it won't filter down to the emulator authors, who are IMO the ones doing the real work.

I never play an Atari 2600 game but I use some PSX/N64 emulators.

I understand how it's bad to sell your open-source work without pay attention about licencies. It's bad when you not acknowledging in contributions.

I juste want to say : Thank your for all your work.

It is the natural and logical result of open source licenses and nobody enforcing them around the globe.

That's not true, open source licences are enforced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IfrOSS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Freedom_Law_Center
Maybe one of these can help the emulator teams as well?

Please, don't be naive.
These may have a certain reach in the Americas and Europe, but besides that?
Some minor (or even major) business in Asia can do mostly whatever they want. Nothing there to keep them in check - or those who could do not really care.

Of course it's possible to base things on morals. It's just not for everyone. Not everyone is the same, and there are people who don't have conscience

And those who have conscience can very easily put them aside if enough $$$ is in it.
This is nothing new.

No, morals are a terrible base for any kind dealing between people. Everyone has their own morals and acts according to them, of course. But they have no place in law or its enforcement.
If your whole argument is "don't do something because I think it is wrong", you have already lost your cause.

As long as their is no tangible downside to people using code without adhering to licenses, people will just continue to do so. And to be honest, I don't really see a way to create something tangible.

It's not just the great ScummVM.
Also DOSBox.

What else projects, btw?

I didn't mention dosbox, because it ceased development years ago. But ScummVM is flourishing so it would be nice if the companies benefiting from it would at least contribute some coding time, if not money...

That's not true, open source licences are enforced.

Please, don't be naive.

No problem, haven't been for decades.

These may have a certain reach in the Americas and Europe, but besides that?
Some minor (or even major) business in Asia can do mostly whatever they want. Nothing there to keep them in check - or those who could do not really care.

You can still block two of the biggest world markets. What Cineese can do in China, we all can see from Windows usage and sells...

Hello people, there are things to be discussed after a long reading.
1) what is nature of GPL and FOSS
2) what is copyleft and copyright
3) why open-source if there are commerical targets?


Last edited by Kuduzkehpan on 21 Dec 2017 at 3:28 pm UTC

"The problem on top of all this, is that it will put off the very people working on such projects from continuing and if your business relies on their work—good luck doing it yourself."
except that they can hire someone with the money they did with the rip offs..


also, its a bit ironic that most of the users of the emulators are pirates, and people are "pirating" their code...

Those users could share some of their plunders. :p

By the way, most of the community behind modifying content for old systems don't "pirate" at all, but publish patches, which require an unmodified ROM to work. Also, they are fans of the companies that used to make these old games, so for the ones that are still around these fans probably generate more profit than the average Joe.

I respect and support Lakka / Libretro. But, I am uncertain what they're trying to achieve here. And I'm not 100% sure if they know themselves.

On one hand they say stuff like: This is final and not subject to change. Bribes are not going to work, donations are not going to work, pledges are not going to work.

And then they comment on the same post with: As long as our software's license and terms are being respected, we are willing to ally and collaborate with people, including the party involved (if they intend on doing things by the book the second time around). But we cannot let wilfull violations of Lakka's license go unanswered. We are forced to act then.

It seems like they're building a great piece of software that people want to use, and then prevent people from shipping it with their hardware. It's as if Google started suing companies for building Android smartphones and required everyone to flash the device when they bought it.

Again, I do understand that they're pissed about people abusing their license. But they're apparently not being specially approachable about the issue either.

I was always curious about this. Let's say something like retroArch is turned into using FPGA cores. Is that still using software? Or is that written out to the hardware, effectively making it not under any license?

As with everything else, the creator chooses the license under which to release their creation. If they borrow from other projects, then they must abide by those projects licences. But if they come up with something completely their own, they are free to do with it as they please.

'Software' for an FPGA is typically written in some hardware description language (HDL), typically Verilog or the like. To come up with the design, the author would typically analyze the circuitry of the device and write code to simulate it. They likely wouldn't borrow from other emulators, since most emulators 'emulate' at a higher level than raw circuit components (for reasons of speed, lack of domain knowledge, etc).

However, if someone releases a hardware core and stipulates that it cannot be used commercially, then technically one couldn't just convert this to software and make the license disappear. The work would be a derived work, and could still be affected by the licencing of the original product.

It's all a fine line, really. There's an axiom in Computer Science that says hardware and software are essentially the same. Hardware is software committed to silicon, and software is virtualized hardware.

For example, there is a developer I know that is creating an FPGA core for the 2600. They have chosen not to release their 'source code' (HDL) so far, but they did want to help with Stella. So they converted the sound hardware circuitry simulation code to 'C', and allowed Stella to use that. I must say that this was greatly appreciated, since it will improve the sound code in Stella to surpass all current emulators. The point being, the HDL stayed closed, but the creator was still able to create and open-source block of code and release it freely.

That is pretty much what I figured, I was more curious about how one would disciver if their VHDL was taken, since with software there are always ways to poke arround the binaries and see if it is using a particular emulator. I would thing FPGA would be harder to tell once the code was written to the gate arrays.

By the way, IS there anither 2600 emulator? I mean that is worth using outside of Stella. I mean Stella is like the cream of the crop, is properly multiplatform, and simply awesome. Thank you for working on it, from all of us nerds! I wish Altirra (for the Atari 8bits) was multiplatform instead of having to run it in wine, since it currently is the best in it's league.

I think TekSyndicate now sell the device without any software and just point to links on their forum on howto install it. Yeah they stuffed up by installing it for people who bought the device first time around, not sure if they mentioned that stuff up or not (on YT).

Curious, what about a bootstrap? So let's say I want to sell a device that uses libretro. Upon first boot up it connects to the internet, shows the libretro license page and then once agreed to, it downloads and installs all the bits?

I would thonk that would be the best way to do it, right? (If I were a company making such a decive.) Also.. assholes should contribute code so the devices all get better.

I respect and support Lakka / Libretro. But, I am uncertain what they're trying to achieve here. And I'm not 100% sure if they know themselves.

On one hand they say stuff like: This is final and not subject to change. Bribes are not going to work, donations are not going to work, pledges are not going to work.

And then they comment on the same post with: As long as our software's license and terms are being respected, we are willing to ally and collaborate with people, including the party involved (if they intend on doing things by the book the second time around). But we cannot let wilfull violations of Lakka's license go unanswered. We are forced to act then.

It seems like they're building a great piece of software that people want to use, and then prevent people from shipping it with their hardware. It's as if Google started suing companies for building Android smartphones and required everyone to flash the device when they bought it.

Again, I do understand that they're pissed about people abusing their license. But they're apparently not being specially approachable about the issue either.

All I'm seeing is them demanding their license agreement be respected if someone intends to ship hardware using that piece of software. Just because a piece of software has been licensed in a way that makes it difficult for you to ship a product with it doesn't mean you get to circumvent the license, it means you need to either work harder to comply with the license or find another piece of software that does the same thing without the license burden.

So what's the problem?

Retro wants the companies to contribute code back to the base and keep their logo and name on it?

If so, that sounds reasonable to me.
--
This is a weird read, I am unsure what "selling" the author is referring to.

Many companies sell hardware bundled with free software. Is he implying they are literally selling the emulators at a extra cost beyond the hardware?


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 21 Dec 2017 at 6:56 pm UTC

Is he implying they are literally selling the emulators at a extra cost beyond the hardware?

AFAIK, some of the libretro cores are ports from emulators that simply cannot be sold, due license. So these shouldn't be shipped with any paid hardware ever.

No, morals are a terrible base for any kind dealing between people. Everyone has their own morals and acts according to them, of course. But they have no place in law or its enforcement.
If your whole argument is "don't do something because I think it is wrong", you have already lost your cause.

As long as their is no tangible downside to people using code without adhering to licenses, people will just continue to do so. And to be honest, I don't really see a way to create something tangible.

I agree that the world right now doesn't give a shit about such things. But that doesn't have to be this way. Despite FOSS having this disadvantage, it still is way better in comparison to closed source. Technically and morally.

Ideally, people don't have to "deal" with each other in the future, but rather contribute for the sake of making something better for everyone - including themselves.