Author Topic: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation  (Read 75518 times)

kev

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #105 on: April 29, 2019, 01:21:23 PM »
So - no one has heard from Barry at all? I figure he has Facebook and other means to get in touch with him.

As kev said, he made a single tweet about it and disappeared. There is no product out yet. It's easy to assume he took the cash and ran, but this is very out of character for him.

I welcome his response to this mess

The lack of public response is telling.

kev

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #106 on: April 29, 2019, 01:24:10 PM »
So - no one has heard from Barry at all? I figure he has Facebook and other means to get in touch with him.

As kev said, he made a single tweet about it and disappeared. There is no product out yet. It's easy to assume he took the cash and ran, but this is very out of character for him.

I welcome his response to this mess

It is about time he or someone involved made a public statement.

Offline hap

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #107 on: April 29, 2019, 01:33:45 PM »
In cases like this, I think it's ok to be a bit 'stalky'. Contact his wife and talk to him through her. Not everyone at once, one respected FBA dev will do. On the chance Barry didn't do this mess with malice, would you still forgive him and continue with FBA together with him? At the least you can talk it out and then decide how to continue from there on.

Offline lantus

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #108 on: April 29, 2019, 02:29:25 PM »
In cases like this, I think it's ok to be a bit 'stalky'. Contact his wife and talk to him through her. Not everyone at once, one respected FBA dev will do. On the chance Barry didn't do this mess with malice, would you still forgive him and continue with FBA together with him? At the least you can talk it out and then decide how to continue from there on.

i would respectfully disagree. Bringing his family into it should never be an option. Please no one do this

kev

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #109 on: April 29, 2019, 02:31:43 PM »
i would respectfully disagree. Bringing his family into it should never be an option. Please no one do this

Yeah, I totally agree with lantus on this one, this is all on Barry.

Offline iq_132

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #110 on: April 29, 2019, 03:03:37 PM »
Yeah, I totally agree with lantus on this one, this is all on Barry.
Third.


Offline hap

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #111 on: April 29, 2019, 03:43:49 PM »
That's fine. Well Barry, if you're reading: man up and contact one of the other FBA devs already =)
No need to go public(yet), but for the sake of the project, the sooner you talk it out the better.

Offline Gab75

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #112 on: April 29, 2019, 03:50:31 PM »
In cases like this, I think it's ok to be a bit 'stalky'. Contact his wife and talk to him through her. Not everyone at once, one respected FBA dev will do. On the chance Barry didn't do this mess with malice, would you still forgive him and continue with FBA together with him? At the least you can talk it out and then decide how to continue from there on.

I don't mean to be negative and I hope to be disproved, but, from how things turned out, it's very unlikely that Barry acted in "good faith"...

Offline Gab75

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #113 on: April 30, 2019, 01:46:23 AM »
Is anyone personal friends with Barry? If so, I would make an attempt to reach out until he responds.   I knew this wasn't looking good when I realized the link to this forum was removed on www.fbalpha.com.

He was a bit "distracted"...

This is the project manager in me speaking so forgive me, but please and in private have a meeting on how to proceed if you decide on making a formal announcement.  It's good to iron out any issues in private.  Make sure the people that are involved in the project past and present are involved and decide what needs to be done to keep this project alive and in a healthy state.  Think about it, what potentially happened is a stress test of this project and it seems like 1 person's actions is affecting the project as a whole.  That is not good for the longevity of the project.  Projects like Debian don't stop because of 1 person's actions.  There is structure in place to prevent situations like this.  I feel like I shouldn't be speaking on this subject as I'm not directly involved, but I would hate for this wonderful project to cease due to this.  I'll gladly and respectfully stop posting if I'm coming off as annoying :-/

AFAIK several unsuccessful attempts have been made to contact Barry... now, should be him to do anything to clarify the matter... IMHO, at this point, it doesn't make sense anymore to "beg him" for a reply. In any case, I want to be positive... the "real project" will go on with or without Barry! ;)
« Last Edit: April 30, 2019, 07:00:11 AM by dink »

Offline Robert

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #114 on: April 30, 2019, 06:06:09 AM »
Could you post the text of the issue here, or is it lost to the very annoying github issue disabling?

Although the text made completely wrong assumptions, here it is...

Quote
Hello,
Came across this after hearing about the Capcom controversy.
Looking through the FBAlpha license, it states that
"FB Alpha would not exist without a lot of code from the MAME project. The MAME project is subject to it's own license, which can be found at http://mamedev.org/legal.html. Due to the use of MAME code in FB Alpha, FB Alpha is also subject to the terms of the MAME license."
The mame license on that page is the GPL. FBAlpha contains GPL code (smssystem.cpp, ddt3x.cpp, etc.)
The GPL specifically requires that "if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have". It does so by requiring
"You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it [like MAME], thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:"
"You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
As such, the GPL requires that (at a minimum) derivative works (like FBAlpha) are available under the GPL. The FBAlpha code can have additional licenses as an option, but the GPL license is still required.
If you attempt to add terms to the GPL (such as those required by license.txt), then you lose the license to the original GPL code.
Accordingly, either FBAlpha is GPL (in which case none of the terms in license.txt mean anything), or it is not (in which case you are infringing copyright and cannot distribute FBAlpha at all).
Unless you wrote all GPL code you use, you cannot add any restrictions on selling, renting, or leasing, require modifications to be public, add restrictions on what ROMs can be used, prohibit the use of DLLs (or any other restrictions on the running of the code), or limit donations. Any of those restrictions exceed the terms of the GPL license you, yourself hold, and as such they void your right to use that GPL code.
If the code is written by you, you are free to relicense it as you see fit. However, no other person may distribute derivative works containing your code and GPL code.
?

Offline dankcushions

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #115 on: April 30, 2019, 06:38:28 AM »
has anyone reached out to the gaming press? eurogamer have approached me before on similar emulator rights issue stories, and this one definitely has some spice about it, with barry disappearing, and a big name like capcom involved.

i'm not sure if it would do the project good or not, but right now capcom seem to have got out of this fairly clean, when these sort of bad PR stories can be a big deal. with enough pressure, they might want to make things right, whatever that entails.

i see kotaku have a short article: https://kotaku.com/the-emulator-in-capcoms-home-arcade-is-stirring-controv-1834156759, but they have a short article on everything...

Offline Haze

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #116 on: April 30, 2019, 09:46:21 AM »
The whole 'FBA installed only providing a link to the MAME license page' is a problem that is causing a lot of confusion.

Obviously that page changed when MAME updated the license, however that doesn't mean the code in FBA changed license as

1) License change isn't retro-active (and FBA is based off old MAME code, under old license)
2) The rest of FBA is inherently incompatible with the GPL, so you can't distribute it at all under those terms.

This should be a lesson in why including a link to something, rather than the actual text can be a bad idea tho.

https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Is_MAME_Open_Source%3F
CLEARLY states the license change isn't retroactive (and from a legal point of view it *can't* be retroactive)

Offline hap

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #117 on: April 30, 2019, 10:13:39 AM »
Woops, mistake in my post: the license change is indeed 0.172, not 0.174.
IMO the MAME license page should also clarify that it doesn't apply to older versions. Maybe include a link to the old license too.

Offline dankcushions

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #118 on: April 30, 2019, 12:19:30 PM »
biff, FBA has been forked for libretro for ages: https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha

Offline Haze

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Re: Capcom Home Arcade stick using FB Alpha Emulation
« Reply #119 on: May 01, 2019, 06:50:53 AM »
Going the LibRetro way is only going to make the problem worse and further annoy those who contributed under 'no commercial' licenses, as things like RetroArch basically provides a way for any scummy company to bypass the license requirement by using the 'core downloader' (which probably wouldn't stand up in a court of law on a locked down box, as it's still integral to the product, but all the chinese bootleggers can get away with it because their systems are 'open')

LibRetro based frontends (RA etc.) are making no effort to show the user the emulation licenses when they get the emulators / run the cores, despite the cores being under different licenses to LR/RA, meaning a lot of people then claim ignorance of the situation because the conditions have never been communicated.  The maintainers are acting in highly irresponsible and complicit ways when it comes to this, ways which are harmful to the emulation scene in general.

LR also makes it easy for anybody to make an ad-driven 'portal' frontend, and again claim they're not going against the wishes of anybody (this happens a fair bit on mobile) 

LR also brings projects closer to things like Kodi (due to Kodi LR loader plugins) and Kodi already has a terrible reputation for being abused commercially in order to sell pirate TV boxes etc. (to the point where boxes etc. get seized, analyzed, legal action taken against plugin developers etc.)  Making it easier to add emulators to these 'all in one' boxes only brings further unwanted attention.

If anything projects would do best to kill off LR support / leave it up to the LR project maintainers, not invest further into it.  I've said elsewhere, LR is parasitic and mainly enables unwanted business models, and I stand by that.

Simply changing FBA to a libretro project would strip if of all identity, and take away the ability to provide the user experience you want as well, making more advanced features more difficult to implement as everything has to fit the 'dumbed down' model they present.

Maybe that's not what they intended when they came up with the concept of 'emulators as libraries' but it was very predictable, and is exactly what has happened.  I still think it's the single worst thing to happen in the 20 years I've been involved in emulation.  I get that it is 'convenient' but that comes at the cost of far too many negatives.  (and this doesn't even cover the technical negatives, only the social / economic ones)

Beyond even that, the core maintainers for LR cores explicitly ignore the wishes of the developers of the emulators they're including.  The RA devs act like they're the saviours and defenders of the scene, but as soon as we say 'please show the emulation imperfection warnings' they try to strong-arm MAMEdev into having an official RA core, telling us to add them ourselves if we want them and coming up with a whole bunch of technical BS about why they can't show them, rather than simply respecting the wishes of the developers.  My experience, and everything to do with them, and LR based projects is overwhelmingly negative.
« Last Edit: May 01, 2019, 07:09:15 AM by Haze »