CAPCOM Home Arcade controversy


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Regarding FB Alpha...

As those in the emulation community were quick to point out, however, FB Alpha is open-source, and distributed under a licence that strictly forbids people from trying to profit off of it.

Pre-orders for the fight stick are currently listed on the Amazon UK Store for £199.99, or $362.

Although it bears the Capcom name and logo, the fight stick is actually produced by Koch Media GmbH, a subsidiary of the video game holding company THQ Nordic. Barry Harris, one of the chief developers of FB Alpha, tweeted on April 16 that “FBAlpha has been licensed by Capcom Home Arcade.”
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https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/04/t...ade-is-stirring-controversy/#article-comments
 
GmbH, eh? I was gonna say it shouldn't be too far for EvilDragon to fly over there and breathe fire on them, but Wikipedia says their headquarters are actually in Austria. Meh.
 
Not sure, couldn't see any?

Maybe you're thinking about the PS1 mini, PCSX ReARMed controversy?

Or maybe there's some off-topic talk in some other thread regarding CAPCOM?
 
Don't see how it's controversial if fbalpha has acknowledged the licence?
After all, I've seen projects with multiple licences, and there was even a game sold for the Pandora where the original author had a non commercial licence, so when i checked, he'd agreed to change the licence so the other party could try and sell it
 
The controversy arises if anyone, say from the retroarch community or some other user submitted a patch which would given them shared copyright over the code, and mean it's not within fbalpha's right to sublicense the code without agreement from all contributors.

However, as far as I recall, CPS1/2 emulators predate any version of final burn I played; I remember downloading that to try out some NeoGeo games I'd never seen in the wild. I'm not sure if the fbalpha guys reimplemented the CPS stuff, and if any patches actually touched the specific bits of code they've relicensed. I guess unless someone with an actual copyright interest pops up we'll have to assume they're in the clear.
 
pmprog said:
Don't see how it's controversial if fbalpha has acknowledged the licence?
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The problem is: None from fbalpha can acknowledge the license.
fbalpha was under a non-commercial license from the beginning. To get it commercially licensed, you would have to get the license for EVERY dev who contributed something to the project, as he did this under the non-commercial license as well.

As parts from MAME (back when they also were non-commercial) are included, these devs also would need to be asked.

So even the main dev of fbalpha can't license it to anyone - EVERY contributor would have to agree, and those are A LOT.
 
As far as I've heard, we're only talking about the CPS1/2 cores here. Those historically have been rather self-contained, so I'd be slightly surprised if any code from MAME devs got in there, unless fbalpha happened to get its CPS cores from MAME, perhaps?

I had been thinking some of those games came from later systems like Capcom Sports Club and Gigawing (especially Gigawing, as I remember that getting a Dreamcast port), but it turns out those are just late CPS2 games (and Progear is a CAVE shooter, although written for CPS2 but always published by Capcom).
 
Almost all CPU cores are from MAME... this is fbalpha, not FinalBurn.
See here:
https://www.fbalpha.com/license/

FB Alpha is based on Final Burn (formally at http://www.finalburn.com), see additional text below.
Musashi MC68000/MC68010/MC68EC020 CPU core by Karl Stenerud (http://www.mamedev.org).
A68K MC68000 CPU core by Mike Coates & Darren Olafson (http://www.mamedev.org).
Z80 CPU core by Juergen Buchmueller (http://www.mamedev.org).
ARM CPU core by Bryan McPhail, Phil Stroffolino (http://www.mamedev.org).
ARM7 CPU core by Steve Ellenoff (http://www.mamedev.org).
H6280 CPU core by Brian McPhail (http://www.mamedev.org).
HD6309 CPU core by John Butler, Tim Lindner (http://www.mamedev.org).
I8039 CPU core by Mirko Buffoni (http://www.mamedev.org).
Konami CPU core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
M6502 CPU core by Juergen Buchmueller (http://www.mamedev.org).
M6800/M6801/M6802/M6803/M6808/HD63701/NSC8105 CPU core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
M6805 CPU core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
M6809 CPU core by John Bulter (http://www.mamedev.org).
NEC V20/V30/V33 CPU core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
PIC16C5X CPU core by Tony La Porta (http://www.mamedev.org).
S2650 CPU core by Juergen Buchmueller (http://www.mamedev.org).
SH-2 CPU core by Juergen Buchmueller (http://www.mamedev.org).
TLCS90 CPU core by Luca Elia (http://www.mamedev.org).
ADSP21XX CPU core by Aaron Giles (http://www.mamedev.org).
AY8910/YM2149 sound core by various authors (http://www.mamedev.org).
C6280 sound core by Charles MacDonald (http://cgfm2.emuviews.com).
DAC sound core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
ES8712 sound core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
ICS2115 sound core by O.Galibert, El-Semi (http://www.mamedev.org).
IREM GA20 sound core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
K005289 sound core by Brian McPhail (http://www.mamedev.org).
K007232 sound core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
K051649 sound core by Brian McPhail (http://www.mamedev.org).
K053260 sound core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
K054539 sound core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
MSM5205 sound core by Aaron Giles (http://www.mamedev.org).
MSM5232 sound core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
RF5C68 sound core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
SAA1099 sound core by Juergen Buchmueller, Manuel Abadia (http://www.mamedev.org).
Sega PCM sound core by MAMEdev (http://www.mamedev.org).
SN76496 sound core by Nicola Salmoria (http://www.mamedev.org).
UPD7759 sound core by Juergen Buchmueller, Mike Balfour, Howie Cohen, Olivier Galibert, Aaron Giles (http://www.mamedev.org).
VLM5030 sound core by Tatsuyuki Satoh (http://www.mamedev.org).
X1010 sound core by Luca Elia, Manbow-J (http://www.mamedev.org).
Y8950/YM3526/YM3812 sound core by Jarek Burczynski & Tatsuyuki Satoh (http://www.mamedev.org).
YM2151 sound core by Jarek Burczynski (http://www.mamedev.org).
YM2203/YM2608/YM2610/YM2612 sound cores by Jarek Burczynski & Tatsuyuki Satoh (http://www.mamedev.org).
YM2413 sound core by Jarek Burczynski (http://www.mamedev.org).
YMF278B sound core by R. Belmont & O.Galibert (http://www.mamedev.org).

These are all based on the old pre-0.172 cores, so they cannot be used for commercial purposes.
You COULD try to replace all the cores be past-0172-MAME-Versions (which are GPL), but then the used CPU will probably be too slow, as these are made for accuracy, not speed.
 
It's Capcom, a big company, what can you do anyways. Better deal with it and simply enjoy a Unique Arcade Stick with official Capcom games for the Collection.
 
You know what people do to show big corporations that they can't get away with everything?
Boycott.
 
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Klumpen said:
You know what people do to show big corporations that they can't get away with everything?
Boycott.
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Problem is, this is (compared) such a niche theme, it's hard to get enough public attention. And on top of it it's "oficial legal" by Capcom, well, pretty weird situation.
Xcl4m4t10n said:
Acid sarcasm there. Almost hurt.
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Sometimes I have my moments...
 
Klumpen said:
You know what people do to show big corporations that they can't get away with everything?
Boycott.
Click to expand...
Capcom have paperwork saying they're allowed to use the code. That they can't legally have been given that paperwork is the fbalpha dev's problem, not capcom's. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy this though, at least to support Koch who've made some cool controllers in the past ISTR. This particular one is ugly as all hell though, so I won't be getting one, but there you go.
 
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