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melonDS-emu / melonDS

DS emulator, sorta
https://melonds.kuribo64.net
GNU General Public License v3.0
3.18k stars 525 forks source link

Cores should be licensed as LGPL, to allow inclusion to chiptune music DAWs/trackers/etc of any license #1666

Open smaybius opened 1 year ago

smaybius commented 1 year ago

Unless those projects are also licensed under GPLv3 or later, the MelonDS core may not be compatible with other emulation hosts like tildearrow's Furnace Tracker which is under the GPLv2 or later license. The LGPL license allows for inclusion to projects of any license like permissive licenses like MIT and lesser-clause BSD do, but it's still perfectly copyleft like the regular GPL is.

CasualPokePlayer commented 1 year ago

GPLv2 or later license means you're compatible with GPLv3, as GPLv3 is a later version of the GPL compared to v2.

On principle, I'd agree, but re-licencing the core at this point would be a monumental effort to get all/most? of the contributors to agree.

Even then, even if you have some technical GPL violation (and in the end you release the source code anyways), I really doubt the melonDS developers (i.e. the only people who can enforce this) are going to get a lawyer to go after you.