Will The Emulators Be Free?

[hal9000]

I'm pretty sure that anyone can sell FOSS software. But they also have to provide the source code to anyone who asks.

So basically, you'd have to be a giant prick.

I think there is a big misunderstanding here.

Making money with a GNU software that you have not written is perfectly ok, both from the legal and the moral point of view.
There is an obvious reason for this: it is explicitely written in the licence.

Everyone who licence its code under the GNU licence knows or should know that. If you are not happy with that, fine, use another
licence, which vorbid commercial use. The problem being that you won't be allowed to use GNU licenced code in it...

Anyway, as stated before, there is no way to make money with on open-source game. You can make money with associated copyrighted
ressources, though (but you won't prevent others to use your engine with third party free ressources...)

 

[HackModford]

sure it is, you complete it in a few hours too

Just think if they had a level editor :rolleyes:

 

[Luminous]

my humble opinion: as long as the emulators that everyone MUST have on hand are not expensive, and the Devs have put a lot of work into it, and by helping financially, the Devs agree to further support their project if their emulator can reasonably be bettered, and has some room for improvement, then why not help out with a lil money in good will, for their efforts (and time).

 

[torpor]

You wouldn't have to be a massive prick to start putting together a great FOSS commercial release, you'd just have to get a licensing agreement from the authors and make sure everyone gets paid.

Oh wait, okay, I see the flaw in the plan.

 

[juniorm33]

It wont cost developers anything to add a program for download within the App store, they will get charged only if they sell the software. Anyone that wants to distribute a program for free will pay no money to OpenPandora at all. I wish people would stop being paranoid about all this.

Has this been confirmed, and if so do you know the structure? Or better still a link?

 

[aesir911]

$20 for a N64 emulator? what the hell?!?!

 

[Luminous]

$20 for a N64 emulator? what the hell?!?!

What are you talking about? If it was to be 20 dollars... Then It would be going into the Expensive category, and not AS many people would be picking that up.

 

[TrashyMG]

It wont cost developers anything to add a program for download within the App store, they will get charged only if they sell the software. Anyone that wants to distribute a program for free will pay no money to OpenPandora at all. I wish people would stop being paranoid about all this.

Has this been confirmed, and if so do you know the structure? Or better still a link?

It runs an unlocked version of linux, you technically could just bypass the app store entirely( if it even has an app store ) and manually install the applications, if you have the know how.

 

[gruso]

$20 for a N64 emulator? what the hell?!?!

j/king means just kidding.

 

[aesir911]

$20 for a N64 emulator? what the hell?!?!

j/king means just kidding.

just saw it... well that's embarrassing...

 

[juniorm33]

It wont cost developers anything to add a program for download within the App store, they will get charged only if they sell the software. Anyone that wants to distribute a program for free will pay no money to OpenPandora at all. I wish people would stop being paranoid about all this.

Has this been confirmed, and if so do you know the structure? Or better still a link?

It runs an unlocked version of linux, you technically could just bypass the app store entirely( if it even has an app store ) and manually install the applications, if you have the know how.

Sorry you've lost me, or did you quote the wrong post?
I'm talking about charge structure to the developer,etc.
E.g. is the charge to the developer the same if they accept donations, compared to charge for something.

Also yea you can bypass the appstore, but if a developer is charging for something and you don't pay and install it manually then that's theft, although you can pay them directly.

 

[WizardStan]

It runs an unlocked version of linux, you technically could just bypass the app store entirely( if it even has an app store ) and manually install the applications, if you have the know how.

The AppStore is just a website. When you pay for an application (including paying nothing for the free ones) you get a download. The download is a PND file. "Installing" it requires nothing more than putting it in the right directory on your SD card. There is no bypass or "manually" installing applications in this case. If you find the PND somewhere other than the official store (or anywhere the author has obviously intentionally placed it) that would be piracy.

 

[TrashyMG]

It wont cost developers anything to add a program for download within the App store, they will get charged only if they sell the software. Anyone that wants to distribute a program for free will pay no money to OpenPandora at all. I wish people would stop being paranoid about all this.

Has this been confirmed, and if so do you know the structure? Or better still a link?

It runs an unlocked version of linux, you technically could just bypass the app store entirely( if it even has an app store ) and manually install the applications, if you have the know how.

Sorry you've lost me, or did you quote the wrong post?
I'm talking about charge structure to the developer,etc.
E.g. is the charge to the developer the same if they accept donations, compared to charge for something.

Also yea you can bypass the appstore, but if a developer is charging for something and you don't pay and install it manually then that's theft, although you can pay them directly.

I think there is a bunch of confusion in this thread. I have no clue if there is an app store or the structure. Since it's Linux I figured it was all Free Open Source. most of the emulators I've seen on the emulator list are open source projects that typically don't charge, they may take donation however.

 

[TrashyMG]

It runs an unlocked version of linux, you technically could just bypass the app store entirely( if it even has an app store ) and manually install the applications, if you have the know how.

The AppStore is just a website. When you pay for an application (including paying nothing for the free ones) you get a download. The download is a PND file. "Installing" it requires nothing more than putting it in the right directory on your SD card. There is no bypass or "manually" installing applications in this case. If you find the PND somewhere other than the official store (or anywhere the author has obviously intentionally placed it) that would be piracy.

So I couldn't for say install mame from compiling the source code myself? I wasn't talking about piracy.. all the emulators on the list for the most part are open source projects. The title of this thread is "Will The Emulators Be Free?" most if not all of them are.

 

[WizardStan]

So I couldn't for say install mame from compiling the source code myself? I wasn't talking about piracy.. all the emulators on the list for the most part are open source projects.

Yes and no.
You could easily get the MAME source for the PC version, you can get it right now, but it wouldn't be directly compilable for the Pandora. A lot of x86 and OpenGL specific stuff needs to be changed before it will actually run on an ARM platform.
So hypothetical situation: someone else has already done all the work. They think they deserve some sort of compensation for their effort, so they put the binary on the AppStore for a reasonable fee. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, legally or morally. And unless you have paid for the binary, he is under no obligation to give you the source code. So getting the Pandora compatible MAME source code and building it yourself would not be easy: someone who has paid for the binary would have to request it and then give it to you. Or you could download the PC source and make the changes yourself. Personally I think it's kind of a dick move (not illegal or really immoral, just not really fair) to get the source code for the sole reason of bypassing someone else's cost.

So, to followup, not all Linux applications are open source. We may actually see closed source ARM binaries in the AppStore at some point in the future. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Not all open source projects are free (as in beer), and this is not a bad thing either. Money encourages people to do better. You get superior open source software when there's incentive to work on it.
Even if the project is open source, they are not obligated to give you the source code unless you have legally acquired the binary.

 

[renwils]

I just think that charging for fully GPL'd code is a bit predatory, especially if users don't know that they can probably find it elsewhere for free. I guess if someone wrote a component of an emulator from the ground up and wanted to package it as a binary DLL, that would be fine though.

 

[juniorm33]

Also keep in mind that sure someone could charge for something after just recompiling the source, but in the end it wouldn't make them any money. Simply because someone else would compile it and put it up for free. All that would accomplish is getting a bad rep

But if they did some work to getting it working, recompiler, opengl to opengl-es port, x86 assembly to Arm etc, then that's a different matter. And although I fully expect most of those to be free also (but may take donations), I wouldn't see a problem with charging.

But my question was about OP structure to how they intend to charge developers for selling there apps (whether it be donations or none free ones)

 

[WizardStan]

But my question was about OP structure to how they intend to charge developers for selling there apps (whether it be donations or none free ones)

They've been fairly quiet about donation, but Craig did say at some point that free apps would be free, the appstore would only take a cut of the paid apps. Probably something like 10 or 20 percent. I wouldn't be surprised if they did that for donations too, although I can't see that working for very long before someone just put a link to their paypal in their app description.

 

[elwing]

I just think that charging for fully GPL'd code is a bit predatory, especially if users don't know that they can probably find it elsewhere for free. I guess if someone wrote a component of an emulator from the ground up and wanted to package it as a binary DLL, that would be fine though.

hum, some open source license allows you to charge for the sofware, but if i'm recalling corectly GPL only allow you to charge for the cost of distribution, no?

 

[WizardStan]

hum, some open source license allows you to charge for the sofware, but if i'm recalling corectly GPL only allow you to charge for the cost of distribution, no?

No. GPL allows you to charge whatever you want however you want, so long as you give the source to anyone who has purchased the binary when they ask for it.