this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 76 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I'm pretty sure it has been forked to the moon and back before he went insane.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Not sure this qualifies as insane. Seems more like a self-defense maneuver to me. People have harassed and stalked this man to an absurd degree over features they wanted and bugs that bothered them that in some cases only existed in forks like Swanstation.

This is on top of this guy working a full time job. He can do what he wants and give away free code to the world on whatever terms he sees fit.

Basically, he got too famous and entitled assholes started treating him like a public slave.

It sucks and I'm sad to see him turn the project away from a true FOSS license, but I'd rather he contribute public code than not.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Kinda insane how many people in a nominally open source community are defending this guy for switching to a proprietary license. If DuckStation gets shut down then I say good riddance. It is not the only PS1 emulator in town and I will not miss the endless flow of Stenzek-related drama.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I was wondering - does the enforcement of no-derivation prevent the applying of patches and file substitutions, while building projects in a substitute build farm? As someone who packages for Guix and requires ELF-patching, I would be violating the new license, right?

[–] Kelly 1 points 3 days ago

Yes, that kind of packaging is exactly what he is fighting!

[–] [email protected] 40 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Unfortunate. It's available as a RetroArch core isn't it? I wonder how that will effect things

[–] [email protected] 58 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The new hard-fork by libretro is called Swanstation. That's what they'll be using now.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 days ago

Good to know. I'll have to look into it further

[–] [email protected] 55 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

It won't effect the core.

The last time he threatened this was the last time he changed his license, because of retroarch making a core of Duckstation in the first place. The Duckstation dev seems to have a real problem with anyone using his code, down to declining bug fix pull requests because he was pissed off at the people complaining about the bug in the first place.

He claimed Retroarch violated the licensing when they made it a core. Not sure if they actually did or not. Wouldn't put it past them as the Retroarch lead devs have done shit like that before. So then they forked his code from before the original license change and used it to make the Swanstation core.

I honestly thought that the Duckstation dev had followed through with his threat years ago and had stopped development.

Either way, it's best to just ignore emulator dev drama like this. Just use the best software and ignore the authors. Unfortunately a lot of them have personality and/or psychological issues that lead to a disproportianate amount of drama.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 days ago

Either way, it's best to just ignore emulator dev drama like this. Just use the best software and ignore the authors.

That’s how I feel about Lemmy lol

[–] skoberlink 10 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Wouldn't put it past them as the Retroarch lead devs have done shit like that before.

Do you have examples? I usually stay out of dev drama as well but I just started using Retroarch and I'm curious. I also don't want to support people that abuse the community, so I'd like to be informed.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Remember Marak Squires, the author of faker.js and color.js? Dude is unhinged in real life, tried making a bomb, nearly got himself killed, and was arrested for arson.

The author of Anarch, Miloslav Číž, also known as drummyfish and tastyfish, is another one of those weirdos - he's one of those stereotypical - "Go read my manifesto" type of guy. He's got his own website (warning: anti-LGBTQ+, social construct denialism, pro-pedophilia). He's also unhinged in the sense that he's posted lots of weird, disturbing shit (warning: blood, naked 3D model) online.

[–] rtxn 15 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Free speech has to be absolute

Movements such as (removed irrelevant part) shouldn't be supported

Make up your mind, my dude.

Reading further into his... thoughts... I think he's far beyond what I would consider "unhinged", and considering his 14th point, probably in possession of hard drives that authorities might want to investigate.

I also discovered that there was a Slovak MEP by the same name who was really passionate about chicken legs.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago

Homophobia and pedophilia, name a more iconic duo

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

https://retroarchleaks.wordpress.com/

also almost every /vg/emugen thread is full of "danny drama"

[–] DacoTaco 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Their source code repo contains a copy of libogc for wii/gc builds because they were annoyed at us. And i do mean a copy. Not a reference, or a sub-module, a full on copy that they build before building the wii/gc executable.

Their own issue, as long as we dont get reports of their broken shit...

Then there are the multiple times they cloned emu repos and butchered them into cores. Or the fact they force the core interface on emulators making them bad.

Retroarch is a nice project from a far, but the closer you look, the more you see huge ass cracks in the project, held down with duct-tape

[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It won’t effect the core.

You sure that's the right effect/affect? Left behind?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Seems like you were the one left behind brother.

What's your favourite flavour of glue?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 days ago (2 children)

One thing I'm missing in all this, did the dude change the license from GPL without the other contributors express permission? That on itself would be a massive violation of the GPL

[–] teolan 23 points 5 days ago (1 children)

He says he has had permission. Given that it's a mostly 1 person project it's possibly true.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The repo alone has 114 contributors, and that's assuming no one copied code from any other project. It's not that small.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 days ago

A lot of contributors of FOSS projects make small changes that aren't copyrightable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

licenses are only as useful as your ability to enforce them in court

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Which GPL violations is he referring to?

[–] yamanii 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

from the article:

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yes exactly, but which parties? Who actually violated the GPLof Duckstation?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

There was a game company called Arcade1UP. I think that they violated the license, so this guy went all nuts. Earlier, he was also being harassed for AetherSX2 under a different alias.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago

Damn. Big shame. GPL violations are far too fucking common.

[–] yamanii 12 points 5 days ago (4 children)

What's so bad about not permitting commercial uses?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Bigger problem is the No Derivatives clause of the CC licence, as compiling or forking the code creates a derivative, so it's now a project nobody is allowed to use (or distribute) in any other form than their exact, precompiled releases.

In fact, as the GitHub terms of service specifically require you to allow forking - as recently demonstrated by the WinAmp project - I wonder if CC ND is even possible to be used in GitHub in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

it's not really "open source" anymore per OSI, specifically #6: https://opensource.org/osd

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

He changed the license without consulting the other committers. Other that that not much.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 days ago

He said somewhere that he did ask a top contributor if they care, and they didn't. He also said that he rewrote a bunch of code to be able to change the license.

I can't verify this, but it doesn't seem like he infringend on someones copyright. Small changes (e.g. a few lines) don't even (necessarily) qualify for copyright (just like the few sentences I wrote here likely don't).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

He claims to have gotten permission from the contributors... not sure where you heard that they didn't.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

To be fair, there are NC software licenses out there under umbrellas like post-open source, copyfair, & copyfarleft. Creative Commons is wrong for this application—& ND is even more questionable—but choosing to follow these other movements is something you can choose to do or support if the noncommercial clause aligns with your philosophy (but incompatibles with GPL & friends can prove difficult).

[–] finitebanjo 4 points 5 days ago

License changed from GPL to a PolyForm Strict and again to a CC-BY-NC-ND license. That means it does not allow commercial use or packaging.

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.