AFAIK retroarch uses swanstation, a hard fork specifically for retroarch created in 2024 when duckstation switched from GPL to a source available license. Also retroarch alternatively has the beetle core which is also a pretty good ps1 emulator
So the beef is that they kept using the code as they were before the license change, which is their right under the original GPL3 license.
If anything is legally questionable here it is the duckstation re-licensing to CC because the author of duckstation is not the author of PRs made before the change to CC, thus they might not have the legal right to change the license to those parts of the code without the assent of the individual PR authors (in most jurisdictions I’m aware of at least). I didn’t see any Contributor License Agreement in the repo, which would be the usual way to acquire this assent.
Edit: Context somebody posted upthread. They rewrote parts of the code and got some contributors to agree to the license change. Remains unclear if that covers everything even to the author apparently, but fair enough I guess.
The question is not just the license, it’s the copyright notice at the top of each file that has information on who authored the file and when, retroarch removed the information and replaced with their own, you are not allowed to do this under gpl
Again the git history does not seem to agree with this. If you compare the history of analog_controller.cpp for example in duckstation and swanstation you will find that the in-file license header was added 3 years ago while the latest common change between the files is from 4 years ago. In other words swanstation is using a version of the source code from before the license change, not removing the license change.
If you have any source for these accusations please post it, because as you have relayed them so far they seem to be untrue.
My understanding is that they forked it after he had a different, earlier crashout about their retroarch core and handling user support. He changed the entire license to prevent them from continuing to use his code to make a core. Then they hard forked from before the license change and made the swanstation core. So not illegal, but spiteful as all hell.
That said, forking it illegally wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for the retroarch devs. It’s entirely possible I don’t have accurate info on the order of events etc.
But I’ll be real, while I care about these devs as people and wish they would just get some community members to act as filters for support requests (seems to be the leading cause of dev burnout)… emulator dev drama isn’t worth getting wrapped up in.
AFAIK retroarch uses swanstation, a hard fork specifically for retroarch created in 2024 when duckstation switched from GPL to a source available license. Also retroarch alternatively has the beetle core which is also a pretty good ps1 emulator
Did not realize swanstation was not the same as Duckstation! In my experience Beetle is good for accuracy but does not run well on lower end systems.
So then, really, swanstation is better anyway.
Well, swanstation doesn’t work standalone and some people have said it performs worse, but it’s not like you need a very powerful system anyway
Retroarch also uses his code illegally, they copied the code and removed his copyright info from it. That’s a big part of his beef.
That’s simply untrue, duckstation changed license from GPL3 to CC on September 1st 2024, while swanstation retains the original GPL3 license from September 11th 2019.
So the beef is that they kept using the code as they were before the license change, which is their right under the original GPL3 license.
If anything is legally questionable here it is the duckstation re-licensing to CC because the author of duckstation is not the author of PRs made before the change to CC, thus they might not have the legal right to change the license to those parts of the code without the assent of the individual PR authors (in most jurisdictions I’m aware of at least). I didn’t see any Contributor License Agreement in the repo, which would be the usual way to acquire this assent.Edit: Context somebody posted upthread. They rewrote parts of the code and got some contributors to agree to the license change. Remains unclear if that covers everything even to the author apparently, but fair enough I guess.
The question is not just the license, it’s the copyright notice at the top of each file that has information on who authored the file and when, retroarch removed the information and replaced with their own, you are not allowed to do this under gpl
Again the git history does not seem to agree with this. If you compare the history of analog_controller.cpp for example in duckstation and swanstation you will find that the in-file license header was added 3 years ago while the latest common change between the files is from 4 years ago. In other words swanstation is using a version of the source code from before the license change, not removing the license change.
If you have any source for these accusations please post it, because as you have relayed them so far they seem to be untrue.
My understanding is that they forked it after he had a different, earlier crashout about their retroarch core and handling user support. He changed the entire license to prevent them from continuing to use his code to make a core. Then they hard forked from before the license change and made the swanstation core. So not illegal, but spiteful as all hell.
That said, forking it illegally wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for the retroarch devs. It’s entirely possible I don’t have accurate info on the order of events etc.
But I’ll be real, while I care about these devs as people and wish they would just get some community members to act as filters for support requests (seems to be the leading cause of dev burnout)… emulator dev drama isn’t worth getting wrapped up in.