Pcsx4All For Caanoo Leaked At Openhandhelds

[3djake]

Yes I have lots of respect for the GPL, I have meet Richard Stallman (the guy who wrote it)
I do believe there is a clause that allows the programmers to clean up their code before release, I also am pretty sure the GPL requires you to make notes in your code explaining what you are attempting to do.
How ever if they release it to the public, they are required to provide the source code.

 

[EvilDragon]

I think they are dragging their asses on releasing the source because the coders of the emu hate the Pandora and don't want the emu ported to it. It sure seemed that way from their posts about it awhile back. If I were them I wouldn't worry about that, there doesn't seem to be anyone porting anything to the Pandora these days anyway.

And that's based on what?
I know a couple of devs who want to port PCSX4ALL to the Pandora but are waiting for the sourcecode.
One of them actually started reporting PCSX anew without speedhacks and more accurate, making it a lot more compatible.
It's still slow (as a lot of optimization is needed), but it runs already more games than zodttds emulator or PCSX4ALL.

 

[htl2001]

I do believe there is a clause that allows the programmers to clean up their code before release

If the binary itself is released though, I don't think this is the case. I may be wrong of course but my understanding is that, if you are distributing the binary (publicly or limited to a group) you must also make the source available to the same group. Unfortunately this would mean any others with the binary/source could release it before you wanted it to be released.

The difference would be if you wrote the code from scratch, in which case, you own the original copyright and can release the code under whatever licences you wish. So while the program is in development you can keep it closed source or whatever you wish. Later, you could release a version under the GPL licence. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ReleaseUnderGPLAndNF

However I think the issue here is that the code is a modification of another GPL'd work so that doesn't apply.

 

[Schnatterplatsch]

Well, some time ago I read around in the spanish pcsx - threads a bit. There are some of them and they tend to be very long, so I can't say exactly where it was, but from the first video of the emulator there was the fear, that:
a ) The hated pandora would probably benefit from it, if the source is released.
b ) The even more hated Zodttd could make a new psx4iphone out of it to sell it for money.

...google translator might fool me, but it seems that you aren't a good gp32spain-member if you haven't at least 50 posts including bashing against [craig|gp32x.de|zodttd|the pandora]. Or am I wrong?

 

[j6cubic]

Well, if they release binaries to anyone without making the sourcecode available to the same people they're in violation of the GPL and thus committing copyright infringement (unless the libraries they build on are dual-licensed under something more permissive). Of course if none of their beta testers are interested in the code nothing ever happens and people who obtained the binaries from anyone but them are not entitled to anything from them (the leaker would have to provide the sources).

Of course if Zod made his commercial emulator based on their work he'd also need to release his sources to any paying customer and each of them would be entirely free to redistribute the sources - so if they have a problem with him charging for the emulator they can just buy one copy, compile it, replace any copyrighted artwork and offer their own competing version for nil. If Zod doesn't release sources for his commercial emulator they can ring up everyone whose work he's using without permission and ask the FSF to aid them in a lawsuit against him.

In short, they're talking out of their asses because they don't care about what the GPL means. Then again, a surprising number of homebrew developers tend to think that "open source" means "public domain" so it might be genuine ignorance.