DCEmulation

It really is sad to see this topic still going without more positive posts regarding the OpenSonic port itself, even a post pointing out a bug would probably have a positive effect on the project as a whole.

Has anyone sent Neoblast an email asking for the Dreamcast Allegro libs?, he has already stated that if you want them just ask for them (I quoted him in my previous post). You could also try and contact Chui via email, he ported Allegro if I'm not mistaken, Chui has always been helpful in the past so it can't hurt to at least try and contact him.

_________________
The beauty of Facebook, Twitter and all the other online media distractions is that those who have no place in real society are kept occupied. In the meantime we useful people will continue to experience real life without the unnecessary hindrance of imbecilic attention.

Woah, one week off on vacation and you start a flame war on my port's topic LOL.

Chill out guys

The only reason why I did not release the allegro part of allegro for dc is because it's not ready for a release yet and the author does not consider it worthy of a release as of now, and you can find allegro on its site and port it yourself, that is not a part of open sonic, the source of the open sonic port is there.

Well, I will release a bug-fix release soon, that features a little speed improvement, real fps counter, and also different controls, etc...

I don't think there's a violation of the GPL, all the source for open sonic is there.
The allegro isn't part of that project and it's being improved.

Thus if you want your the allegro port to dc just PM me and i will send it to you or wait for the release, it will be very soon.

A source code more cleaned and fixed in some stuff. The game will crash if you do not disable DEBUG in kos and recompile the kernel ( out of ram -> kernel panic ).
Fackue, you're right if anyone wants the allegro lib, just ask for it, I'm pretty sure Chui will be helpful, and I could contact him as well. I only have the binaries, chui has the source and he's missing.

Dreamcast.es stuff SHOULD have the source code, in fact it always has but sometimes the source is included in another section of the downloads page.

At last but not least thank you for your support, without you I couldnt have found bugs

EDIT: If you want the allegro lib for dc just ask for it, it's like asking for the whole KOS source and libs within every release for dreamcast included, it has not been publicly released because it's on the very final stages of beta testing but you can have it if you want.
Chui has been gone for a few weeks and I do not have the whole source of the allegro port but I have the binaries that's why I can't release it.

By the way DREAMSHELL uses KOS and some GPL stuff and we havent seen any bit of source code yet nobody is complaining about that, why opensonic and not dreamshell?

Good to see you back Neoblast, this topic needed some input from you to get back on track. I think the main problem is with the source that was released with OpenSonic beta 1, nobody seems to be able to compile it. The readme says you can compile your own but something is missing somewhere, I'm assuming it's Allegro because that's what the coders are referring to.


Are you saying you do not need Allegro to compile the source for OpenSonic beta 1?.


That was me who said that by the way, but I'm sure Fackue won't mind.

_________________
The beauty of Facebook, Twitter and all the other online media distractions is that those who have no place in real society are kept occupied. In the meantime we useful people will continue to experience real life without the unnecessary hindrance of imbecilic attention.

That doesn't matter. The entire work, Allegro included, has to be distributable under the terms of the GPL.

Essentially, the GPL is intended to ensure that anyone can re-create the binaries using the provided source code. Without the modifications made to Allegro for the Dreamcast port, nobody else can recreate the binaries, which means that the source code is pretty much useless.

It's one of the more surprising things about the GPL - it covers the entire program, not just the parts that are explicitly GPL licensed. So if you link to a BSD-licensed library (like KOS, for example), that library is actually covered under the GPL as well. If you make any modifications to that library, you are required to release those modifications.

That means that if the modifications to Allegro can't be distributed, neither can the binaries of OpenSonic, or any other GPL-licensed port using Allegro.



Not really - KOS is publicly available elsewhere, under a license less restrictive than the GPL. As long as you've not made any modifications to KOS itself, nobody would expect the source code to be included.

The Dreamcast port of Allegro isn't available publicly, so we couldn't just go and get it. That's really the only difference.



If it's a library, it's only useful to developers. So what's the point of beta testing it?



Probably because nobody here speaks Russian.

As far as I can tell, Dreamshell uses KOS, some of the libraries included in KOS, and Lua. Those are under less restrictive free software licenses (BSD, MIT, zlib) - there's actually no requirement to release any source code at all.

Of course, if they're using a GPL or LGPL library, that's another matter entirely.

I've asked for the source. If you don't have the source, then you can't distribute binaries based on it. Its as plain and simple as that. That's all I've been saying up until now, while trying to defend myself against the flames that have come at me.

After all the head scratching I think this whole situation really is about the lack of education when it comes to licensing (and I for one am guilty of that lack of education). The language barriers of some coders do not help the situation but there are translations available. Now comes the first BIG problem, these translations are considered unofficial, and this coming from a body that takes licensing seriously?.

Is a coder who is not a native speaker of English guilty of an unofficial release when his native language license reference is considered unofficial by the licensing foundation? (it would probably be easier trying to answer the riddle "Why is a Raven like a Writing Desk?").

All the licenses were really foreign to me but it's been a learning experience literally ripping them apart to try and completely understand them (I am NOT claiming to COMPLETELY understand them though). In my line of work I've had to understand all sorts of legislation crap for a living, but my line of work means that not only do I have to understand it but dissect it and practically translate it to layman terms for those that I supervise (hence why I like to literally 'rip apart' any form of legislation or license).

Wouldn't it be a good idea if someone wrote an 'unofficial' 'layman terms' license as a generic reference for anyone coding (or wishing to code) for the Dreamcast (or any other platform for that matter)?. I think this sort of 'layman terms' reference would be far more beneficial for everyone, especially non-native English coders.

"Knowledge may be power, but communication is the key"

_________________
The beauty of Facebook, Twitter and all the other online media distractions is that those who have no place in real society are kept occupied. In the meantime we useful people will continue to experience real life without the unnecessary hindrance of imbecilic attention.

The GPL translations are unofficial, but as far as I can tell, that's only for legal protection. They had lawyers read over the English one, and approve of it. They then translated it, but don't have any multi-lingual lawyers to read over the translations. Hence the "unofficial" status. They're fairly accurate translations, as far as I know.

As for "unofficial layman's terms", the GNU site for the GPL has a very useful FAQ about the GPL that explains pretty much all of it.

I also have lack knowledge about licenses. What licenses would I put a game under if I didn't want to release the source?

Well, you'd probably write some longwinded legal document similar to a EULA that you see when you install most non-open-source programs on your computer. Most of the ready-to-use licenses on the Internet are open-source (aka, free software) licenses that would not apply to what you're asking in here.

You'd of course need to be careful that you don't violate any of the licenses of any components, since a GPLed component automatically forces the whole thing to be distributed under terms compatible with the GPL (which was the problem in this thread).

If in doubt, contact a lawyer for advice, since nobody can give you sound legal advice other than someone trained in the field.

I always understood it so that you can GPL your code, no matter what library or compiler you used. - Gens in example uses the Starscream core which is licensed under Neill Corlett's own license prohibiting commercial use. Gens however is GPL'd. From what I understood, this would mean that all of Gens but Starscream is GPL'd because you cannot change the license of a program that you did not write yourself.

_________________
I reject the reality and substitute my own.

Technically, I do not believe this to be allowable under the GPL, since you cannot possibly distribute the entire project under the terms of the GPL.

This specific reason is why I made my own Z80 core for CrabEmu, since all the decent Z80 cores were under more restrictive licenses than the GPL.

I'd like to think that as well but that is not the case, it is not because they do not have any multi-lingual lawyers, they seem to not believe their licensing is worth the difficulty or expense:

They obviously believe their licensing to be THE LAW in native English but leave gapping loopholes for anyone that is not a native speaker of English, even a graduate lawyer could simply point to the 'unofficial' translation whilst the accused 'unofficial' coder would simply have to say 'què' to everything. Case Closed!.


I'm assuming that you are referring to this, the FAQ does cover a lot of aspects in somewhat simplified terms as opposed to the licenses themselves, but it does not come anywhere near 'layman terms'.

We could debate this whole thing over and over whilst picking loopholes everywhere, but I really do believe that a new approach to educating coders in general is required, a common simplified language explaining licenses, one that can be easily translated without too many mishaps along the way. Think about this for a minute: just because someone can type machine code, does it mean that they are fluent in their own native language?.

_________________
The beauty of Facebook, Twitter and all the other online media distractions is that those who have no place in real society are kept occupied. In the meantime we useful people will continue to experience real life without the unnecessary hindrance of imbecilic attention.

I don't think anyone wants to be inflamatory here. Your port obviously took some work to accomplish, and I don't think anybody is trying to take away from that. The concern is over the GPL, and you've said that you will get the Allegro DC source code, so we'll all be satisfied once you do.

_________________
Storm! Studios
DCHelp

True, but my impression was that you could distribute your code under the GPL and Starscream under the Starscream license.

I remember defending the GPL against someone that hated it with a passion, and I tried to find any evidence that his claims (one of which was the code contamination theory) were true. From what I remember I found few rather vague sentences at FSF.org's FAQs on that topic. It seemed to me that they don't support the idea of mixing different licenses (with good reasons), but from what I remember it wasn't a nono.




It seemed there were so many Z80 cores - I wasn't aware that so few used the GPL.

_________________
I reject the reality and substitute my own.

My understanding of it is that when a program contains both GPL and non-GPL code, the GPL imposes requirements upon the distribution of the program as a whole, which it can do as a condition of licensing the GPL parts. The license of the other parts is not changed, but if you don't provide all the rights/freedoms/privileges of the GPL for the entire program, then the GPL does not grant permission to distribute the GPL part(s).


A bunch of emulator cores, particularly older ones, are under rather obnoxious licenses, apparently written by the developers themselves. One time I was thinking about using one of the CPU cores from MAME, until I saw this gem:

I hope I don't need to explain why this renders the license utterly absurd.

_________________
"You know, I have a great, wonderful, really original method of teaching antitrust law, and it kept 80 percent of the students awake. They learned things. It was fabulous." -- Justice Stephen Breyer

As source code, certainly. As a compiled binary, no. Once compiled, the two are linked into a single program.

The license for Gens should probably have been GPL, with an exception to allow linking against Starscream. The original author can do whatever they like with the license - they wrote it, after all.



Anything you like. As the author of your own code, you get to decide what others may do with it.

If you use any external libraries or code written by other people, be aware that they get to decide how you can use their code, and make sure you abide by their wishes as well.

There are two major classes of open source licenses. Broadly speaking, you have copyleft licenses (which compel sharing of source code - the GPL is the most well-known), and the rest (which do not - things like the BSD license, X11/MIT license, zlib license).

Some of the more common ones can be found on Wikipedia.

I've found some information on the issues at hand:

GPL'd software + non-free libraries: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/g ... WithNFLibs

GPL'd software as part of a package/program with incompatible licenses:
Public Domain: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/g ... ainWithGPL
Proprietary: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/g ... tarySystem

_________________
I reject the reality and substitute my own.

Im back from my vacations now, I was at a cibercafe that day.
Well it might be a GPL violation but I just wanted a little feedback to improve it.
I did not know that was a violation since they are different projects, I hadn't read the whole license so... sorry for that, I hope the source will be available soon but... would anyone really want that source code to use it or just complain about its availability?
Chui has been missing for a while, and I don't have the source of the allegro part but I have the binaries if someone wants to test them. we've been trying to contact him to release it, as we were detailing and fixing some stuff.
Now that I'm back to my usual schedule ( and at home ) I will continue my projects and will answer to everyone that has contacted me.

I think that having the source would be helpful in two ways. First, it would allow people to make new programs/port existing programs that rely on Allegro, as well as compile programs such as your port of OpenSonic. Second, it would allow people the chance to send patches to Chui so that the library gets better and he doesn't have to do it all himself.

_________________
Storm! Studios
DCHelp

See even after all of that, Chui isn't even around to release the libraries, so they literally can't until that issue is resolved.

Who has the closest contact with him, Fox68k, Neoblast, etc...? Maybe someone should try PM'ing Fox.

It seems a shame that this late in the life of the DC homebrew scene that it's reduced to bickering, infighting, and the like.

Can't everyone just play nice?

_________________