There's been a bit of a furore in the emulation community lately centred around the PlayStation 1 emulator DuckStation, which has now seen two license changes recently. As far as I'm aware, DuckStation is the most popular emulator for Sony's classic PS1 console, due to it being fast and accurate.
Up until recently it was open source under the GPL, then on September 1st it changed over to the PolyForm Strict License, and then again on September 13th it was changed over to the CC-BY-NC-ND license. This places a number of restrictions on the project like no commercial use and no derivatives allowed. That means, according to the creator, that no one else is allowed to package it up either as their change mentioned "Packaging is still **not** permitted, since it is effectively a modified/derived work".
Replying to a user unhappy about it on the GitHub, the creator said this:
I am well aware of how licenses work. That's why I changed, to make it very clear and a deterrent due to certain parties violating the old license, by not attributing and stripping my copyright. Packagers being collateral damage was a beneficial side-effect, considering they don't clearly mark their versions as modified (also a GPL requirement), break functionality, and expect upstream to provide support.
I have the approval of prior contributors, and if I did somehow miss you, then please advise me so I can rewrite that code. I didn't spend several weekends rewriting various parts for no reason. I do not have, nor want a CLA, because I do not agree with taking away contributor's copyright.
Also, I don't appreciate the threats. If you are not a copyright holder, then you are not in a position to make any demands. I find it especially ironic, considering when the GPL was actually violated on multiple occasions, even as recently as a few months ago, nobody ever takes issue with that.
I've restricted the repository to prior contributors, and if they have any concerns, they are more than welcome to do so here. If this turns into harassment, then I'll just shut the whole thing down, because I'm way too busy with my actual job to be dealing with unsubstantiated drama from a hobby that is supposed to be fun. Please consider how the community would benefit from that.
With that in mind, this means DuckStation as of the latest changes is no longer open source. You could say it's "source available", or whatever your chosen way is to describe code you can view but has restrictions on it.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
CyborgZeta Sep 16
mr-victory Sep 16
Quoting: romattheSony hasn't sued anyone since Bleem.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America%2C_Inc._v._Hotz
This developer is far too prone to flying off the handle to put much faith in, especially with the most locked down CC license there is.
Last edited by Desum on 16 September 2024 at 4:47 pm UTC
Quoting: DesumThis is the ReDream mistake all over again but worse for the project (Flycast has pretty much replaced ReDream as the top Dreamcast Emulator). Duckstation already has a hard fork which probably has more users called Swanstation that will remain under the GPL. So why contribute bug reports and code to Duckstation when more people are using Swanstation anyway? I'll stick to Swanstation and Mednafen, thank you very much.
This developer is far too prone to flying off the handle to put much faith in, especially with the most locked down CC license there is.
You know, Swanstation was actually the related drama-with-Retroarch in the past I was referring to. Frankly, SwanStation were "the bad guys" from that situation, not the good guys.
Honestly, the current situation sounds a LOT like that situation, almost identical really. I would not be surprised if it's still the same situation resurfaced. Last time he almost closed his own project/quit, or did rather, before coming back and resuming development. This time it sounds like he's taking a different drastic approach that doesn't involve him closing his passion project.
Really if nothing else, this shows the pitfalls of open source as opposed to the virtues.
I don't think it's fair to say the guy is too prone to flying off the handle. He was driven to flying off the handle, and the aggressors were never in the right. Could he have handled it better? Sure. Should he have been in that situation? No.
I will continue to use DuckStation, personally.
I am entirely unfamiliar with either situation, but at least with SwanStation you can fork it AGAIN if you dislike their managment.
Quoting: TechnopeasantRather than calling anyone the "bad guy", would you be able to describe what the issue with SwanStation was?
I am entirely unfamiliar with either situation, but at least with SwanStation you can fork it AGAIN if you dislike their managment.
Well, in this case, I would actually use those words. But it's fair to want to make your own opinion. Essentially the Swanstation fork was created by someone for a commercial project, they also raised a lot of money to do so via Kickstarter. Retroarch also weighed in with their opinions, and while they didn't necessarily side with either side directly, they did make a point to point out that the license technically allows it -- and cue Futurama "Technically correct is the best kind of correct". You can dig up the drama without too much effort from that occasion, although this video summarizes it fairly well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-iRW7BAoOU
That also means no inclusion in Linux distributions, and even *with* custom agreements that will be difficult, since this license is just completely incompatible with basically every distribution's terms.
In fact, this choice of license also means no further contributors unless every single one can get the approval of every single other contributor. This is a complete nightmare to walk into as a developer.
This is a completely baffling choice.
Now, after learning from that, he’s realized his own beliefs are incompatible with the open source nature of emulation and has made his project closed source, which is a shame.
Quoting: dibzQuoting: DesumThis is the ReDream mistake all over again but worse for the project (Flycast has pretty much replaced ReDream as the top Dreamcast Emulator). Duckstation already has a hard fork which probably has more users called Swanstation that will remain under the GPL. So why contribute bug reports and code to Duckstation when more people are using Swanstation anyway? I'll stick to Swanstation and Mednafen, thank you very much.
This developer is far too prone to flying off the handle to put much faith in, especially with the most locked down CC license there is.
You know, Swanstation was actually the related drama-with-Retroarch in the past I was referring to. Frankly, SwanStation were "the bad guys" from that situation, not the good guys.
Honestly, the current situation sounds a LOT like that situation, almost identical really. I would not be surprised if it's still the same situation resurfaced. Last time he almost closed his own project/quit, or did rather, before coming back and resuming development. This time it sounds like he's taking a different drastic approach that doesn't involve him closing his passion project.
Really if nothing else, this shows the pitfalls of open source as opposed to the virtues.
I don't think it's fair to say the guy is too prone to flying off the handle. He was driven to flying off the handle, and the aggressors were never in the right. Could he have handled it better? Sure. Should he have been in that situation? No.
I will continue to use DuckStation, personally.
The maintainers Swanstation are the good guys now. The developer of Duckstation has basically done a bait and switch on every single user. As it stands, why would I submit bug reports to Duckstation and not Swanstation?
Last edited by Desum on 16 September 2024 at 11:59 pm UTC
Swanstation was a port of the libretro-core that was maintained by RetroArch without Stenzek's permission after he and the head developer of RetroArch had a falling out over Stenzek teying to push code updates to the tree and the RetroArch dev reversing the changes because "he didn't like them".
Duckstation was meant to be distributed as-is either in flatpak, self extracting executables, or the unmodified source code for distributions of Linux/BSD to do their own localized and self-maintained ports with. The exe and flatpak versions would be supported officially by stenzek where as the source code ports would be distribution maintained.
He changed the license because he doesn't want people to clone Duckstation and then steal his work, and have people blaming him for a forked project's faults like Swanstation did.
I don't blame him. The GPL is a very flawed license when it comes to allowing a developer to have absolute control over him/her project. For some projects its fine, but for others it's a total headache.
This is why many developers in the past have used BSDL, MIT, and other more restricive licenses to maintain control and prevent unauthorized forking. This saves Stenzek the time and trouble of dealing with unofficial ports, packages, and projects. He's not saying you can't fork the project, but what he is say is, if you fork, all changes have to be submitted back forst in private, and approved before you publish your changes go public in your fork so the entire project is on the same page.
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