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FluBBaOfWard / S8DS

A Sega 8bit systems emulator for Nintendo DS(i)/3DS
21 stars 3 forks source link

License #3

Open ijones-gh opened 2 years ago

ijones-gh commented 2 years ago

Sorry for the newbie question. I've had a look through the files and folders, but I couldn't find any documentation of the license terms that s8ds is released under. Could you please point this out to me. Thank you for your time.

FluBBaOfWard commented 2 years ago

I haven't decided upon a license yet since a lot of the code is derived from a lot of different places (started with PocketNES, Z80 I think started with Reesy, or if it started with my GameBoy emulator). What do you want to do with the source?

ijones-gh commented 2 years ago

Thanks for your reply and thanks for clarifying. Sounds like its not as simple as I thought. I was only going to study the code, as S8DS is the emulator that I use with TwilightMenu++ and I thought I should start by understanding the license. I have no intention to complicate matters and grateful for the work you've put in creating this great software.

Nomagno commented 2 years ago

Hello! I have been looking at the licensing of your projects lately. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Your project seems to be currently licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License Version 2.1, which is a copyleft license. This is because the license has a viralization clause, and by including a single piece of code under the LGPLv2.1 (Docs/sg1000a.c) you implicitly release the entire project under this license. If you don't want this, the easiest solution is to delete/replace this file. HOWEVER, all files under source/AY3910/ are released under full copyright, meaning you can't really use them at all technically. The easiest solution to this is to replace the entire sound chip emulator, but I wouldn't say you're at an imminent risk of getting sued so no need to panic. ANOTHER ISSUE is that you need to restore the 'zlib.h' file that came with the same project you took source/Shared/crc32.c from, even if you don't use it, then it's legally fine. I don't know if you're using code from other authors without realizing/without a written agreement, but if only explicit copyright notices indicate copyright from other people, then you have to (easiest path): Replace the AY3910 contents with your own code, restore 'zlib.h', delete Docs/sg1000a.c, and then I would recommend to save trouble to all projects already using the emulator (if you want) to license everything under the MIT license or a similarly permissive equivalent. Best regards

FluBBaOfWard commented 2 years ago

The files under "Doc" are not used as code (they are not linked) in the project as such they don't infect my program with the LGPL license. When anyone creates a work the copyright automatically falls to the creator, that has nothing to do with licensing, two completely different things. Are you talking about AY38910 because that is written by me.

Nomagno commented 2 years ago

I did not realize you wrote the sound chip emulator since it is the only place there are copyright notices, my bad. I still think you need to include that 'zlib.h' file though, because else the zlib license of crc32.c wouldn't really be properly included.