Sega Dreamcast, Saturn And Mega Drive Hardware Coming From Retro-Bit in 2018


As an additional followup to this, we are trying to resolve this situation in an amicable fashion with Retro-Bit. They have gotten back to me and confirmed it was using Snes9x and that this will be removed. An agreement is not yet finalized, but we might be able to turn this situation around in a way that benefits both. Non-commercially licensed emulators are off-limits though and I think both us and Retro-Bit are now fully cognizant of that fact, so there's no need to reiterate that.

I guess I have to thank @EvilDragon for trying to set up this line of communication. We would only wish the other two companies had proven to be similarly respectable in terms of conduct so far. We hope that will still change, but I'm not exactly holding my breath.
 
I just saw this and once again I am disappointed by the boundaries that are being attempted to be pushed here -

https://www.dragonbox.de/en/702-time-machine-v3-consoles.html

"It is powered by a Rasperry Pi 3B (included) and the acclaimed Emulation Station software."

"M.A.M.E. (Arcade Machines) – Amiga – Amstrad CPC – Apple II – Atari 800 – Atari 2600 – Atari ST – Coleco Vision - Commodore 64 – Dreamcast (beta) – Dragon 32 – Game & Watch – Game Boy Advance – Intellivision – MSX – Neo Geo – N.E.S. – Nintendo 64 – Philips Videopac – PlayStation – ScummVM – Sega Game Gear – Sega Megadrive – Sega Master System – Super Nintendo – Turbo Grafx – Vectrex – ZX Spectrum- ...up to 47 computer systems"

Super Nintendo would be Snes9x on a Pi 3, non-commercial.

MAME would be all the old MAME cores, all non-commercial.

There are probably a ton more problematic things here. For more information on which cores are non-commercial and which is not permissible for you to sell on any hardware, see here -

https://docs.libretro.com/tech/licenses/

I also see a FBA logo showing up - Final Burn Alpha is also non-commercially licensed.

I don't see how selling this makes it any different from what Hyperkin, Cybergadget and others have been trying to get away with.

It is still a license violation all the same by bundling this device up with this software, and you are pretty much repeating the same offenses by selling this.

I am really fed up that despite the fact that you (EvilDragon) listened to what I had to say about these license violations in this thread, you are now selling a box on your store that pretty much causes the very same offenses. Just seems like a bunch of slick talking by you and trying to push the boundaries of what you think you can get away with. Seems like nothing registered and you just want to make a quick buck and that is it. You essentially learned nothing from this entire conversation.

You are hurting the Snes9x authors by selling this, the Final Burn Alpha guys by selling this, and those old MAME cores were noncommercially licensed and are not up to date with current licensing terms. None of them approve of this, and neither do I.

This is pretty much like the ultimate betrayal after hearing for weeks all this stuff from you about how you 'understood' and all this song and dance, only for you to go and start being an accessory to the same crime.

What is it going to take for you 'retro' salesmen to finally stop pushing the boundaries of acceptability? Do I have to contact even more mainstream games press sources and tell them about this kind of shady stuff going on before you guys will finally stop pushing the boundaries of acceptability and accept that NO MEANS NO? Do let me know, because I'm not bullshitting around here.
 
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I'm thinking of leaving this forum too and dropping support for OpenPandora altogether. I was thinking of bringing it back with official support, you can forget about that now after seeing this latest 'hustle'. If you do active harm to my project and that of affiliated projects like Snes9x, Final Burn Alpha, and other noncommercially licensed emulators despite all that has been said and done, then I'm done. For fuck's sake, this thread is 4 pages long and goes on and on about NON-COMMERCIAL LICENSE VIOLATIONS, only for you to then start repeating the same cycle and selling the very same shit on your own storefront right now. Unbelievable and disgusting.

This is now the second time I have given you the benefit of the doubt, and in the end it just seems you want to keep pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable and not and just repeat the very same offenses that others have done in the past. You are just as bad as them, and you only care about yourself. All you entrepreneurs are the same, none of you are reliable, trustworthy, or have a shred of decency in your bones.

This is not a 'mistake' by you, this is deliberate at this point. Ignorance is not an excuse, especially not after numerous exchanges I have had with you explaining the issues. What this is, is openly spitting in my face at this point.

You as well as other entrepreneurs seem to think 'oh who cares about emulator developers and their licenses, right? Fuck those guys, you can just spit all over them and get away with murder'. What goes around, comes around. If this is the way you think you should interact with and respect/honor other people's works, don't be surprised if homebrew developers like us will not back your hardware projects either.
 
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ible said:
well, @Autechre, give EvilDragon a chance to respond. it looks like time machine is made by someone else:
http://www.toad.es/shop/gb/13-retro-computers

perhaps they have an agreement with the software makers?
Click to expand...

No they don't and CANNOT have an agreement.

There is NOBODY at Snes9x that sells anybody licenses. There is nobody to talk to from Final Burn Alpha or MAME that could give them the permission to sell this. This is just shady bullshit entrepreneurs parasitizing off people whom they know don't have lawyers on speed dial to sue them.

Just like RetroBit does NOT have any agreement with the software makers. They certainly don't have one with us either, and if they are not going to honor the GPLv3's license terms, they never will.

And EvilDragon should know better at this point. This is deliberate ignorance at this point, and it is massively disappointing and feels like a massive betrayal that even after this Eurogamer article, he would choose to start selling this.

I have given him two times now the benefit of the doubt, and apparently it seems he just keeps betraying my trust. He as well as the other entrepreneurs think that as long as people don't want to rack up legal fees in order to start suing people, that it doesn't matter if you can shit all over the licenses. That is not a person I choose to interact with anymore, neither is it a person whose products I intend to support for my own project, and I sure as hell won't be doing any hardware projects with such a person either. He has no respect for me or any of the other software authors that made this emulation software, and neither do the ripoff artists that sell this overpriced junk.
 
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I think we should let the man speak for himself personally. For all I know he might have asked the developers and they'd assured him they'd got permission from all the developers. In any case it probably doesn't hurt if when we spot these things we notify him and give him the chance to make good, but I can see what you mean when you say he should have been aware of these things to check himself.

As far as I've seen it's been on the shop for a while now, and we've only been talking about bad licensing since January this year (surprisingly - though it was older than that myself). Maybe it was already for sale and given we didn't flag it before now, it's somewhat more on us to have noticed, I suggest. He didn't announce it on his twitter though, so I don't know off hand how to check when it went up. Some digging on the wayback machine maybe?
 
levi said:
I think we should let the man speak for himself personally. For all I know he might have asked the developers and they'd assured him they'd got permission from all the developers.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, this little rundown scrappy IT store in Spain between 1 to 10 employees that cobbled this mess together surely must have all properly licensed this! I would totally take them at their word and all that!

https://www.facebook.com/imedia.es/?rf=117039361697201

At this point if he still takes entities like this and their (bullshit) word as gospel despite the fact that any Snes9x author will tell you (including bearoso) on their own Github account that no license sales have ever taken place, then he is complicit in license violation/copyright infringement and in not bothering to do due diligence. I'm sorry but if you cannot tell these people are full of shit and just laughing all the way to the bank at this point, you are enabling them and you are complicit in this mess.

Maybe it was up for a long time (I dunno, December is a long time these days?). Why, then, all of a sudden, the 'special' banner? Who came up with that all of a sudden? Why did he not immediately act after our talks and make sure this product was gone from his store? This discussion was ongoing in December 2017 and January 2018. Plenty of time methinks.
 
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Autechre said:
Why, then, all of a sudden, the 'special' banner? Who came up with that all of a sudden?
Click to expand...
Well, it seems to be one of the only consoles currently in stock at his shop. The MIST boards are out of stock, although he does appear to be selling a retrobit console (for which the product info states its SNES emulation is truly horrible, so I don't know what core that's using)
 
https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/time-machine-v3-2-player-edition.82103/

Seems to date back to November 2017. We can maybe give him one month where we could attribute this to 'ignorance' before our article dropped on the misuse of this emulator software (although honestly, earlier articles were already posted on this years ago, I honestly don't buy the narrative that he and others didn't know about these non-commercially licensed emulators in the first place).

Still, though, he has been well aware of this now for the past few months since the start of this thread, and not only apparently is it still being sold on his store, it is apparently a frontpage product right now.

What am I supposed to take from that? Amusement? You tell me what I'm supposed to establish from that. Because sincerity and integrity is the last thing that comes to mind, more like 'let's hope this guy doesn't notice that I am selling a very similar product right now and just hope this blows over so I can still sell the last few remaining products'.
 
So if I am to understand this, it's not okay to sell something that includes SNES emulation, but it is okay to sell something that connects to the internet and downloads said emulation after the user turns it on? If that's the case, then why don't the manufacturers just change it to do that.
[doublepost=1520107089,1520106962][/doublepost]If he already has a stock of them, what do you want him to do, lose money because he can't sell the devices he already paid money for? I'm not sure if he can get a refund from the manufacturer at this point.
 
If he already has a stock of them, what do you want him to do, lose money because he can't sell the devices he already paid money for? I'm not sure if he can get a refund from the manufacturer at this point.
Click to expand...

It is not my problem how he chooses to get rid of it. That is the cost of doing business and allying with the wrong people.

And you already assume by that - that there actually was an intent to stop selling them. There is no indication of that provided whatsoever.

What I do know, is that judging by his actions so far, that this might not be a person I can trust for any kind of hardware project if this is the kind of stuff he is doing on the side, blatantly furthering a bad situation by disrespecting my rights as well as the rights of all other emulator creators that had a hand in this.
 
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Well ED is extremely busy, hopefully he'll post an explanation soon. Personally I think this entire thing is getting too angry. If any of this hinders the Pyra being released, I'm going to be absolutely furious. I've been waiting for it for three years, and anytime anything looks like it's going to get in the way of it coming out, I get anxiety.
 
Silent-Hunter said:
Well ED is extremely busy, hopefully he'll post an explanation soon. Personally I think this entire thing is getting too angry. If any of this hinders the Pyra being released, I'm going to be absolutely furious. I've been waiting for it for three years, and anytime anything looks like it's going to get in the way of it coming out, I get anxiety.
Click to expand...

Yeah !! TELL THEM !! xD
 
PowerGod said:
Yeah !! TELL THEM !! xD
Click to expand...
I know, I'm getting too upset. I just don't agree that this is ED's fault, if he was told that the Time Machine was okay to sell.

And I'm upset that all this anger could affect the Pyra in some way.
 
Knowing ED, he will put scripts to download automatically everything needed if it can't be already put inside the device for legal issues.
 
Silent-Hunter said:
If he already has a stock of them, what do you want him to do, lose money because he can't sell the devices he already paid money for? I'm not sure if he can get a refund from the manufacturer at this point.
Click to expand...
Easy solution: sell the same hardware without the pre-written SD card. It's a raspberry pi and a joystick so nothing special.

Silent-Hunter said:
I know, I'm getting too upset. I just don't agree that this is ED's fault, if he was told that the Time Machine was okay to sell.
And I'm upset that all this anger could affect the Pyra in some way.
Click to expand...
If you're told it's okay to sell something, it doesn't mean it is legal or right. There is not a lot of anger here, only Autechre jumping to conclusions. No need to make this bigger than it is, especially when ED has not written about this device on this thread yet.
 
It seems to me there's quite a lot of anger; he jumped to conclusions yes, but the way he said things comes off as furious. And yes, selling it without the SD card is a solution, but so is having scripts, like PowerGod said. It seems like Autechre thinks that even auto downloading the software at first boot is violating the license.

I know, I overreacted, but this is completely unfair to freak out at ED like this.
[doublepost=1520125629,1520116969][/doublepost]I hope I didn't drive the guy away. Now ED won't be able to respond to him. :(
 
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