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GBA Emulator Creators Vow To Take On Nintendo
Justin Nolan writes "According to a PDALive article, Kyle Poole of Crimson Fire Entertainment has decided to take on Nintendo after their legal threats regarding his Zodiac Tapwave-based Game Boy Advance emulator, Firestorm gbaZ. The following post can be found in his forum: 'We believe that the US Patent No 6,672,963 does not apply to Firestorm gbaZ, as the patent clearly covers optimizing an emulator based on detecting a predetermined video game title... Because of this, we have decided that we will release the emulator early next week as a free open source project, covered by the GPL license. We will of course provide a compiled version for you to use, but the full source code will also be available. This will provide us further legal protection, as we will not be profiting from it.'"
Because of this, we have decided that we will release the emulator early next week as a free open source project, covered by the GPL license. We will of course provide a compiled version for you to use, but the full source code will also be available.
eg You can stop us making a profit, but we'll use what we have to fuck you over in return.
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I've moved on.
They got what they paid for -- a Gameboy Advance emulator.
The fact that some other people get it for free doesn't change the fact that they evaluated what something was worth to them and made the choice to buy it.
Biblical parables are not all that popular on Slashdot, but the workers in the vinyard really does illustrate this point nicely. Humans have this weird psychological quirk where they measure what they have very directly by what their peer is getting.
May we never see th
"Because of this, we have decided that we will release the emulator early next week as a free open source project, covered by the GPL license. We will of course provide a compiled version for you to use, but the full source code will also be available. This will provide us further legal protection, as we will not be profiting from it"
Brilliant move. I'd have more respect for these guys if they started it as an Open Source project to begin with. Now they're just being asses. What they should have done instead is marketed it as a development tool.
Let me give you all a piece of advice: Don't use Open Source to advocate (either directly or indirectly like in this case) piracy. You don't want corps like Nintendo burned by actions like this. How do you really think other software development houses are going to see it?
"Derp de derp."
Too bad it's not for the PalmOS buddy. The Palm scene is a bit scarce in the area of funding sometimes, but that'll change in time.
It'd still be an emulator, Nintendo still would be unhappy (it's not as if Big N likes independent games, either), and that claim would be difficult to support given the earlier game-playing focus and lack of a Palm-based GBA development toolchain.
This guy's written a closed emulator, and has taken preorders for it. He advertises with screenshots without mentioning any standard way of interfacing gameboy games into the platform his software runs on. Of course Nintendo's pissed, he's selling tools to pirate games. Ironically, now several of his own customers are pissed as well and want their preorder money back (dipshits, its not like software runs out).
You'll notice in the patent several emulators and website references to emulation. The patent makes several claims, and I'm not certain the only claim made within the patent is an emulator that can determine what kind of game is played. This "innovation" would be to look at offset in the rom that indicates which platform the game is intended for. Its also hardly revolutionary. No$gmb can accomplish this feat. And I believe visual boy advance can as well.
The lesson is that most companies take a dim view of profiting from their hard work. If you just want to build an emulator, the easiest part of steering clear of trouble is to make it open source. It's worked for zsnes and snes9x. And in the process we've seen a far greater application of emulators than before when handled by a small clergy of programmers and friends.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
In that case, there go your legal defense funds...
Seriously: how the bloody hell will these guys be able to defend themselves against Nintendo without any money?
Goo goo g'joob.
I can't imagine a better way to fuck oneself. Not only are they going to kill themselves off, they're going to hurt Open Source in the process.
--Moo.
If the emulator goes down your taking the GPL with it?
Seriously, I don't see how this can uphold in court: an emulator which copies the hardware structure of a game boy advance deliberately meant as a development kit or a way to get free GBA games just won't cut it. Either way, they're taking Nintendo's product and distributing it that directly interferes with Nintendo's business: If they market it as an emulator, it gets ruled against for the piracy of games: If it's marketed as a development tool, it gets shut down for a deliberate attempt at prevention of revenue for Nintendo: Development kits cost money to make, and this could legally be proven to unlawfully interfere with Nintendo's business practices.
Not to mention the fact that this "development kit" was designed for use with a Nintendo product which, by law, Nintendo owns all rights to, including the ability to deny and/or approve of who can develop for it. Saying that what they're doing is legal is just a load of bull
Even if Nintendo still makes millions, the law applies equally to everyone: It protects small companies from the loss of their products, and, depending on the size and/or stability of such company, potential bankruptcy. It also protects the large companies, like Nintendo, from being denied the profits of their products.
Whether you like it or not, the law just wouldn't be justified if it didn't apply equally.
Not to mention the fact that this "development kit" was designed for use with a Nintendo product which, by law, Nintendo owns all rights to, including the ability to deny and/or approve of who can develop for it.
WHAT law? They have rights to all the standard libraries, sure, but if someone were to write code for the machine from the ground up, make carts, and sell them, Nintendo couldn't do a damn thing (provided that there was no use of Nintendo seals on packaging, etc.). See all the public-domain ROMs for reference, or Feet of Fury for the Dreamcast.
-insert a witty something-
In past court cases, emulators have been fine, so long as they do not distribute copyrighted code in the hardware, such as bios images, without permission.
Furthermore, it has been held to be legitimate to copy copyrighted code, or statements about licensing in software required for interoperability. See Sega v. Accolade.
If Nintendo were to patent the entire operation of the Gameboy, it might be possible to sue emulators for patent infringement, but the novel parts of a Gameboy are going to be the circuit implementation and electric specs, which aren't emulated at a level that would be infringing.
Need a Catering Connection
VisualBoyAdvance is particularly cool in that it uses SDL to do everything... you can get it to work on OSX and Solaris too (or basically anything SDL supports). Any modern system is fast enough to emulate a GBA. So you can play your GBA at work, home, or school, without carrying it around! :-)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
This is exactly the type on nonsense we DON'T need as all this SCO stuff is going down.
wow pdalive must read zodiacgamer.com news page. :P
You forget -- Bleem kicked Sony's ass all over the place in the courts
I'm not sure how many people have checked out the other stuff on their site, but this looks like it has been built with RPG Maker 2000, and I'm not sure if it's even legal to seel games you make with that program. Anyway, this company just seems like a hack; they design a product, get in hot water because a large corporation claims it infringes on their patents, then release it as open source to misdirect things away from the fact that they are trying to turn a profit? Maybe Infinium Labs can learn something here; when their investors start screaming for a goddamn product, they can just say they released it as open source and are waiting for the magic to happen...
--
Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
"...covered by the GPL license"
Is that like NT Technology?
Does anyone else here think non-profit projects should be exempt from patents?
Patents are intended to award a monopoly to a company in a market, not to hinder progress.
But there could be something I've missed?
A blog I run for the wealth
I remember Sony buying VGS after getting the circuit court to add to the body of case law favoring emulation, yes.
Funny, put don't most Z-machine emulators for the old infocom games include a number of tricks to change and optimize behavior based on certain game titles - not just on z-code version.
It might fall under prior art.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
If it's marketed as a development tool, it gets shut down for a deliberate attempt at prevention of revenue for Nintendo
Did you think about what you just wrote at all before posting? I suppose next that you'll tell us that Pepsi is being shut down for a deliberate attempt at "prevention of revenue" for Coke?
It's not against the law to bring out a product that will cause financial hardship for another company. In fact, that's what drives our economy. Each company tries to outdo its competitors.
If a product violates some particular law, that's one thing, but simply being successful to the deteriment of a competitor is not a crime.
It is a recipe for bankruptcy.
I do think the minority should go bankrupt so that the majority can benefit from cheaper software.
Also, don't forget patents cost ~5000-8000 excluding lawer fees in the UK alone. Global cover can cost millions. That isn't protecting anybody but the already successful. The already successful should be penalized for the sake of economy.
"the stimulus driving the economy would suffer considerably"
That's right. I believe that people would spend less money on Nintendo and have more money free to spend on something else, another market. If people are spending less on things that are mostly IP, like music and software, and more on tangible products like bread, milk and petrol, that leads to a more stable economy... and less waste.
I think if someone wants to replicate the function of a companies` product and provide it to the greater good for free they should be allowed to, even if a minority loses out?
A blog I run for the wealth
This is called Dumping you dumb ass. Its used by big corporations with lots of money to squash smaller rivals. For example Microsoft has 40 billion dollars in the bank. They could conceviably give away xboxs and games for free until they drive everyone else out of buisness. While you might like getting stuff for free it means in the end your entire life will be controlled by large corporations and nothing new will ever get made.