MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Mess with the RetroArch + MAME 0.187 last night.

> That's utterly appalling, and I had no idea that any of this was happening. It really
> does take profiting from others' work to a new and disgusting level.

Well the thing is, there's nothing you can really do about it. Part of the open source/free software spirit is that people should be able to solicit funds for it if they want, but they can't stop anyone who gets to code/software from redistributing it.

This is how you get Red Hat. The sell support for a Linux distro. Anyone is free to remove Red Hat branding and redistribute it, and that's what CentOS originally was (de-branded Red Hat Linux). But no-one can then demand free support from Red Hat, or tell Red Hat to stop charging for support.

If someone wants to fund the RetroArch people's build farm and bug bounties, that's between them and the RetroArch team. Now you can argue that it's stupid to fund RetroArch because they provide no value and you can get the underlying emulators for free. Also, you can get RetroArch for free - libretro is very permissively licensed, and RetroArch is GPL3, so anyone can debrand and redistribute it. But it would be against the spirit of open source/free software try and stop people profiting from a derived work of an open source/free software application.

I don't think all the doom and gloom is really true. I think RetroArch is actually useful in a perverse kind of way. It offloads a lot of the support burden for people who just want to play T3H FREEE GAMEZ!!!! We're not dealing with these goons any more because RetroArch is having to field them. The RetroArch guys are pretty good at telling people not to report bugs upstream if they can't be reproduced in baseline builds of the emulators. The people who are actually interested in emulation still gravitate to the actual emulator communities. RetroArch doesn't offer them anything.

I disagree with the RetroArch guys about a lot of things. I don't think RetroArch is very user-friendly. It doesn't provide what I personally want from an emulator. I think they by and large don't understand accuracy-focussed emulation. But that doesn't mean they have no right to exist. We should be able to compete with them on merits, and outlast them just like we've outlast countless other emulators.

Oh, and on the topic of soliciting funds, feel free to buy me beer on Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/cuavas
(Yes, it's a parody of all the Patreons that people suggest are just going towards their operators' beer funds. But I really will spend any funds I get on beer.)