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Jaleco Borrows PocketNES Emulator Source Code
Thanks to Waxy.org for its story discussing Jaleco's apparently legitimate use of the public domain PocketNES emulator in a Game Boy Advance game without explicit permission, explaining: "While the emulation community was outraged, the emulator's programmer felt a bit differently." The article notes: "Like the recent Classic NES Series, Jaleco Entertainment's Jajamaru Jr. for the Gameboy Advance is a nostalgic reissue for the Japanese market... [that] includes five different emulated classic NES/Famicom titles from Jaleco's library: Ninja Jajamaru, Jajamaru's Great Adventure, Exerion, City Connection, and Formation Z." Although "Emulation fans were upset, with cries of copyright infringement", the emulator's author responded: "Yes, PocketNES is public domain... I wanted it to be public domain. This 'Jaleco incident', in fact, is the very reason I wanted to make it FREE (as in public domain) rather than 'GPL free' (strings attached). I'm not a fan of the GPL, I think it's selfish."
Emulator author releases source to public domain. Company takes advantage of his generosity to use public domain source. Emulator author pleased that his source is being used. Everyone happy except fanboys who don't know what "public domain" means.
Am I missing something, or is there basically no story here?
I know Loopy, and this is what he always intended. There is nothing wrong with the company doing this. I agree with Loopy that prohibiting commercial use is selfish a lot of the time, but I wouldn't say *always*.
Melissa
Since the program was released under a very liberal license, this is the kind of thing that can happen, but as long as thats ok with the developer(s), then its a non issue. It's almost the same as when Microsoft used the BSD networking stack in Windows, where again nobody really cared but I'm sure it mustave flattered the original developers.
Public Domain is where coders often put "abandonware" stuff they're not particularly interested or proud of, or they'd likely get into legal hot water for asserting their ownership. (Or, alternatively, they're US Government employees who were funded by the US taxpayers).
I'm not saying they don't value their own software -- clearly they do, like any coder does -- but they don't care enough about it to ask people even to assert their authorship.
Given those set of values, I can easily understand the coder here.
Does my bum look big in this?
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
I followed the link to the PocketNES site, and sent the author a small cash contribution, just because it's so refreshing to see somebody act and respond so magnanimously.
Things here worked out brilliantly. The PocketNES folks put out a great piece of free software that many people enjoy, video game fans get to legally play some old classics, and Jaleco employees get some cash.
Those people who champion the GPL because they believe proprietary software is inherently wrong, I have respect for. (Though the subset of those champions who make their living writing proprietary software, well...) Stallman's plan certainly worked; look at all the excellent GPL-licensed software out there. It's a huge codebase that will never make its way into closed-source software -- mission accomplished. And it certainly was a clever plot to use copyright to keep software open.
But I'm not so politically motivated. Public-domain-style licenses are just fine for most open-source purposes. This situation was a perfect example why. Nobody gets hurt! Like I said above, things here worked out great for Jaleco, for PocketNES (which certainly gets more respect and attention for this), and for the Japanese video-game-playing public in general.
The only "injuries" are that Jaleco is selling more closed-source software, and that the PocketNES author doesn't get a cut. But the author knew full well this could happen, and he didn't care, because it didn't hurt him! He wasn't motivated by greed.
So the only remaining "injury" is that the body of closed-source software has once again grown. Again, for those of you who think this is a Bad Thing, I respect you and your views. But I disagree, and I suspect many of you do, too. GPL is overkill, most of the time.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Nintendo will no doubt be thrilled to learn that they have now licenced a game that contains code from an "unofficial" emulator.
Considering how the want to prohibit even legal hardware emulation of their systems (unless they have control over it), I think Jaleco might be in a tiny bit of hot water...
Maybe the author just doesn't care about credit, has no interest in playing bullshit software politic games, and just wants to have fun writing some software. You ever think that not everyone sees software as a religion?
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
PocketNES contains GPLed code by the way, it uses the MiniLZO Library. Jaleco is not using that component.
the emulation community was upset about copyright infringement of an emulator's source code. Someone tell them they're infringing on copyrights by downloading ROMs for free. hypocrites. -_-
The author of PocketNES appears to be aware of some GPL infringement (perhaps infringement of MiniLZO), but it casts an entirely different light on the story (and thus makes so much of this Slashdot story obsolete). The author writes:
As you can see, the author dismisses this far too quickly; this infringement may change the entire means by which PocketNES is licensed. But this whole story shows the underlying reality of copyright law: licenses are only as strong as the copyright holder. If the copyright holder(s) to MiniLZO do not defend their copyright, their work can and will be included in non-GPL derivatives.
Take another look at this quote from the PocketNES author:
There are profound misunderstandings here, but I think I can distill the major points of rebuttal to two objections:
I have no problem with someone choosing to place their work into the PD or license their work under a generous non-copyleft license (like the new BSD license or the MIT X11 license). I use those works, I build upon those works, I distribute those works, and I thank them for their effort. I also have no problem with works regularly entering the PD by expiring copyright in a timely manner (far shorter than the current term of copyright). But that's not what appears to be going on here; neither of these sentiments are being made real here. This author's words appear to be an attempt at a gift of code with a colossal misunderstanding of why the GPL exists and what it attempts to do.
I usually find that people who don't mind treating businesses like charities are naive and have little real-world experience with businesses. They are rudely awakened to the reality that one's misunderstanding of how copyright law works will not absolve them of copyright responsibilities.
Digital Citizen