Topic: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation

[lantus]

now im really confused

Barry said on twitter - FBAlpha has been licensed by Capcom Home Arcade.

[iq_132]

What the hell Barry?

[dink]

ok, so wow, I'm surprised. disregard  everything I said 3 messages above!!  I eat my words.

But...

Barry, how come we didn't know about this?
and
Barry, you da man!!!

at the same time, strangely

best regards,
- dink

[lantus]

link to tweet

https://twitter.com/fbalpha/status/1118201306034974721

[Stifu]

Barry, how come we didn't know about this?

Good question. You'd think he'd at least notify the team / top contributors. At the very least once the whole thing becomes public, in case there was an NDA or something.

[Stifu]

Barry, how come we didn't know about this?

Good question. You'd think he'd at least notify the team / top contributors. At the very least once the whole thing becomes public, in case there was an NDA or something.

[kev]

Good question. You'd think he'd at least notify the team / top contributors. At the very least once the whole thing becomes public, in case there was an NDA or something.

You can't NDA something that is illegal.

[kev]

This is now being sold on Amazon here in the UK. Pretty outrageous. And again I doubt they would give enough of a crap for us to be able to stop them.

In a lot of ways I would have preferred that they just stole the code without telling anyone about it, just like all the other crappy console manufacturers do. If it's a sh** port running on an old phone with the FB Alpha name all over it that will be sad, and also the mostly likely scenario.

[Haze]

Well as a team you need to work out what your position is.

I don't see how Barry can be doing this, having kept the rest of the team seemingly in the dark over it.  It seems literally NO other dev on FBA was aware of this deal.

Even in the 'best case' scenario, where the project has been basically rewritten from scratch by reporting all the components from compatible versions etc. this isn't something to keep the rest of the team in the dark over, it's still something where you'd first do public consultations to see if you can get people to agree new licenses etc. before going that route. 

Barry makes it sound like he approved the deal somehow.

You (as the rest of the development team) need to be asking him how he has managed that.  At this stage the majority of FBA, including your core / framework code has had submissions to it that would have been made under a non-commercial license (since that's what the existing code was, and new submissions have to be compatible with existing code licenses) and also has taken code from projects under non-commercial licenses; one person cannot overrule that and simply change the license.

From where I'm sitting this is very much NOT how you do software licensing, NOT how you work with an existing team, definitely NOT how you do PR, and overall this does NOT seem like it can be legal.

I've been generally supportive of FBA as I feel it offers a better alternative than older versions of MAME due to being actively developed and therefore benefiting from new discoveries etc., but this throws your entire project into limbo.

[Fulg0re]

This is seriously the biggest fail I ve ever noticed.
How embarrassing. Well to Programm or creat emulators were and won't be illegal. Also to use it as long as you dump your own pcbs etc. Pp. But in this case capcom stole the code of the idea and workload of someone other. If the creator of FBA would have registered some kind of patent it would not be easy as it is actually. So to get a patent for an creation which has been found in the past and want to reach an penalty for an stolen code under commercial usage won't be possible. That's what I found in the web regarding the misuse of someones idea / copyright.... Very bad...

Aghh one more thing

I really do love capcom since way over 30 years. This is f***ing embarising that a company which makes a f***ing bunch of money every year that they have to steal such tuff and make money. Also sad that enough will going to hype this system and celebrate capcom. I am really disappointed

[Haze]

That's probably why they say they have wifi, to download fba after the purchase.

FWIW that wouldn't fly in a court of law, at least not if the machine is locked down to running that software rather than just being a generic PC open to you installing anything (people hacking it later doesn't count)

It's still an integral part of the package (they're even advertising it as such) and what would basically be a day-0 'firmware update' to provide the advertised functionality doesn't change that.

This is 100% commercial use.

If it was simply a joystick on which you could install some emulators of your own choosing if you wanted, sure, it would be fine, but with the product here, even if they go the 'wifi download' route you're forced to either accept that option or have what is basically a large paperweight without any of the advertised features.

This isn't cool, this is the kind of thing the community will likely crucify you for.

(the Chinese bootleggers do get away with this more easily as those things typically ARE just open systems, where it's entirely up to you what you actually do with them and the games, emulators etc. shown are just examples)

[dink]

It doesn't bother me enough to even care.  I'll tell you why...
Anyone who has roms / other companies IP on their system without licensing them, be it to emulate them or play them - that has anything to say about licensing at all.. is a hypocrite.  It's as simple as that.

Fulg0re, you've got it all wrong, I think you need to re-read what is going on here buddy.

One thing I know for a fact, that will never change:
FBAlpha is a great project, and regardless of any backseat drama, I still work on it and enjoy working on it for friends and fans. 

best regards,
- dink

[Haze]

The message you're giving out here to any potential contributor to FBA is that their will is going to be ignored, and you simply don't care.  You're basically saying the license they submit code to you under does not matter.

That is how you kill a project and get it blacklisted everywhere.

If you're serious about working in the software industry it's the kind of project you can't be seen as contributing to as well as most professional software development studios have VERY strict rules and regulations when it comes to this kind of thing, so showing that you're willing to flout them so flagrantly counts against you.  If they associate you in real life with your username, or worse, you've stated you've worked on a project that gets flagged as ignoring licenses in this way then even in real life you can find yourself blacklisted (I've had to help with this very process for a company in the past and people have been rejected simply for working on improperly licensed software)  This alone is enough to put off new contributors to your project.

This is not just fun and games, it's a serious business I'm afraid.

You might wonder why this is, but it is absolutely vital to a professional software development studio that their in-house codebases don't become tainted by software that hasn't been properly licensed.  The worst thing a developer can do is just lift code from somewhere without looking properly at a license, or be willing to completely ignore it.  Cleaning this up can cost hundreds of thousands, enough to bankrupt a small studio several times over, with the cost of cleaning it up multiplying almost exponentially depending on how much further code was based on that tainted code.  No reputable company wants to be involved with somebody who has shown a willingness to introduce such issues and ignore them.

One of the issues is that FBA did originally come from when people weren't quite so well informed on software licensing, and if anything you should be working to clean that up, not dismissing the problem.

What you're saying here is highly offensive to those who have tried to work hard to clean up the licensing situation and offer legal alternatives.

[dink]

DRAHHHMAAAA *insert pink gay hand image here*

[Fulg0re]

Hi there

Sorry that for my missunderstanding something wrong.
I really celebrating and enjoying playing my arcades thanx
to FBA and its great performance. I realy appreciate your
work. I am not disappointed from you guys... More from
capcom. I think this should be clear now. Please keep up
your great work!!