ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.
zodttd.com
zodttd.com
To respond to some posts here. I generally don't charge for emulators. An example of profit sharing for ones I do, gpSPhone is done with an arrangement between the original author and I. It is licensed accordingly.
Though not an excuse these apps are largely an overblown hobby for me. I've come to learn how seriously people take this licensing. I always tended to do a lot of incremental updates, sometimes multiple ones to multiple products a day. Source control was a mess up until recently. Like I said, this was hobby-grade.
For those talking about a quick buck. If you think I'm getting rich off these emulators, you're sorely mistaken. I can easily focus AppStore and do better. Really all I wanted to do was take peoples requests for ports since the Tapwave Zodiac, GBA, and GP2X days, and give them something to play with.
I've heard enough bashing of my name over the past year, that I haven't touched much at all since then. There's a laundry list of updates I want to do, but there's so much involved now it's not worth the grief. I had way too many ports being worked on, and spread way too thin.
I'm sure someone else will come along, step up, and do a lot of great work for emulation and homebrew in general on mobile devices. Just remember they do this out of love, either for free or unsustainable pay, and deal with tons of support questions and requests daily. Don't burn them out on politics.
I will gladly respond to concerns, as I have before. Though none of this will be needed to be discussed soon enough.
If you want to gain credibility on this, I suggest you to do an extensive research from your past work, see what open source code you used, and explain for each case, with more or less verifiable material, what actions, mandatory or courteous, you have taken in order to respect software license and their author (code publication, credits, and so on).
This all comes down to freshening up my GitHub and removing a Cydia Store product. This will be done but I let this mob mentality continue for too long.
I spread myself pretty thin. I can count 20+ projects depending how far into the couple years I go. I have well over 4GB of development files with the majority being source trees.
Some of these will be fairly straight forward and not require much action at all. As Xuzz notes here, I have my projects source up on my GitHub, sometimes it just needs to be updated. Also sometimes it is updated, but just lands up needing some organizing to realize it (version number mismatches in code or instance).
Most however will be difficult when it comes to who to credit. I found out this is taken close to the heart over the years. I upset someone I respect very much, Notaz, at one point for not giving credit where credit was due. I rectified this with psx4droid v3 which I used his source, maintained a COPYING and README, credited, and kept the source up to date on GitHub. The issue is many emulators have been rehashed and ported so many times. For instance psx4droid v3 is based on Notaz PCSX-ReARMed which is a port of PCSX-Reloaded which is based on PCSX at some point. Along the way it used a MAME author's source file for handling the GTE. The MAME author contacted me for credit on the next revision which has not happened yet, and we discussed the issue at hand was it being passed down so much. So sometimes the credit list is huge and mostly unknown, and sometimes licenses mismatch if you really look at the sources.
A good example is SNES which has been rehashed and ported to death from snes9x (and as Xuzz pointed out, will fix) almost exclusively. The code usually becomes a huge mix in the end to the point it's a good luck situation to unravel it.
So doing this is not impossible, I will have to find some balance to please as many as possible without going insane trying to figure the sort out. Most being freshening the source at GitHub and checking compliance there. In the end there will be those who will complain and smear regardless. For those in this mob, they would never be fans and/or customers in the first place, but they do affect the overall feel of a company. And that's what concerns me moving forward...
I appreciate you being calm and courteous with your constructive criticism.
All these problems you describe remind me of most GPL violations: people not caring much where code comes from (gotta prototype fast), not using source management for their internal process, and then finishing a huge pile of code with no traceability whatsoever with regards to what come from where and whom. Add to that the fact that you come from the emulator community, who is more interested in credits and who did what than licenses and legal stuff (as opposed to OSS communities).
Obviously, you've learned how to use git and other modern tools by now, but the damage has already been done, and your reputation tarnished. Regaining that back is not gonna be an easy one, because everyone is watching your every steps.
I already talked to you on Twitter about a violation in psx4droid: you published libpsx (https://github.com/zodttd/libpsx) which is the emulation library, the core of the app. But this is just a library, and not the whole app. And this library is under GPLv2, and you're basically linking to it and distributing it in your apk. Therefore, the whole app (psx4droid) should be released as GPL, including the UI, and all the candy around(buildscripts…). And that's with this kind of borderline behavior that you find so many people bad-mouthing you here on HN (no one is against the guy making a buck).
The UI is in Java and is part of a closed source project which I have been honoring. The library is called by the JNI. It is not linked statically.
If you have more to say on the usage of libraries in GPLv2, please share.
I'm curious.
However, looking at his GitHub, his source releases are not timely (although they do seem to be complete). If ZodTTD just added "dump source to GitHub" as part of his release process, there would be no issues here. I don't think ZodTTD is deliberately trying to steal money or code from anyone, but I think he misunderstands the importance of putting out the source code for his emulators right away, as they are released to a store.
(However, there is one exception: SNES9x has a license specifically forbidding commercial use. ZodTTD's "snes4iphone" then does, in fact, either need to be taken down or (at least?) made free from now on.)
The GPL does not require this.
The GPLv2 says this:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,
Note (b): you do not have to provide the source code on a public server, nor do you have to do so immediately. The requirements are:
1. A notice that source code is available for three years upon request
2. That requests for source code be honored at cost
If nobody ever requests your source, you're still compliant with the GPLv2 if you never release it.
edit: and note that, for a commercial product, you only have to honor customer requests.
You have a rotten history of taking others' open source work and trying to turn it around for a quick buck. Google had every right to suspend your accounts.
It does get complex when a single Open Source project contains code from multiple different contributors, each holding their own copyright. I believe that's one reason why plenty of OSS projects (GNU & Android both spring to mind although with opposite motives) require contributors to assign copyright as part of contributing.
Alternatively, it's also a problem if you (say) link a bunch of GPL-licensed libraries to your own OSS source code. AFAIK in that case you can't really relicense & distribute your project in its entirety under a different license, due to GPL virality.
I have NFI if any of these gotchas apply in this case, though.
Of course all of this is likely irrelevant in this specific case, since I don't think this guy is telling the truth here, but you can absolutely sell GPL (or any other FOSS license) licensed code to other parties under a different license that doesn't require them to share code as long as you hold the copyright to that code.
In a situation where there is a free (as in beer) product, and someone comes along and then sells it "for a quick buck", they are not automatically thieves - they are in fact doing the work of the free market by promoting and spreading the product. Their value add is in packaging, distribution, advertising, etc.
Now, if things are done without attribution in contravention of licenses etc., then it's straight up illegal and wrong. I just wanted to point out that selling something which is normally free is not automatically immoral or ripping people off.
ZodTTD from his own statements had a trademark violation on one of Sony's marks. According to other developers he was committing license violations. Combining the two he's in violation of the android market terms that he agreed to. Any way you slice it the termination of his market account was well within Google's rights.
Here's part of the agreement for developers on the android market that applies to this situation:
7.2 Google Takedowns. While Google does not intend, and does not undertake, to monitor the Products or their content, if Google is notified by you or otherwise becomes aware and determines in its sole discretion that a Product or any portion thereof or your Brand Features; (a) violates the intellectual property rights or any other rights of any third party; (b) violates any applicable law or is subject to an injunction; (c) is pornographic, obscene or otherwise violates Google's hosting policies or other terms of service as may be updated by Google from time to time in its sole discretion; (d) is being distributed by you improperly; (e) may create liability for Google or Authorized Carriers; (f) is deemed by Google to have a virus or is deemed to be malware, spyware or have an adverse impact on Google's or an Authorized Carrier's network; (g) violates the terms of this Agreement or the Market Content Policy for Developers; or (h) the display of the Product is impacting the integrity of Google servers (i.e., users are unable to access such content or otherwise experience difficulty), Google may remove the Product from the Market or reclassify the Product at its sole discretion. Google reserves the right to suspend and/or bar any Developer from the Market at its sole discretion.
Google enters into distribution agreements with device manufacturers and Authorized Carriers to place the Market software client application for the Market on Devices. These distribution agreements may require the involuntary removal of Products in violation of the Device manufacturer's or Authorized Carrier's terms of service.
In the event that your Product is involuntarily removed because it is defective, malicious, infringes intellectual property rights of another person, defames, violates a third party's right of publicity or privacy, or does not comply with applicable law, and an end user purchased such Product within a year before the date of takedown,: (i) you must refund to Google, all amounts received, plus any associated fees (i.e. chargebacks and payment transaction fees), and (ii) Google may, at its sole discretion, withhold from your future sales the amount in subsection (i) above.
Oh really? If they violated licencing terms, drop a mail the EFF[1] guys and they'll help to sort it out. They already have helped in sorting out a bunch of cases, most often amicably.
If ZodTTD conformed to the licensing terms, what's your point? It's the original developer that picks particular license -- wide is variety available already, covering most grounds.
He apparently provides no evidence of this and is removing comments from his blog that question the claim... so i'm skeptical.
but really i'm not seeing why you can't address the issue that every one seems to have it in for you on.
personally i'll grab the popcorn and stfu, if the copyright holders have issues with your distribution i'll let them handle it.
What was Google to do pat you on the head and say good job? No, instead they followed the agreement you signed.
Rather than blame Google why not read the damn thing you signed?!
Not much of a habit, I had a couple products on there. Only major thing up there was psx4droid. The rest were lil things I did to learn some techniques within psx4droid.
The driving motivation to come to Android was a petition of a few thousand signers asking me to produce exactly what I did.
Also remember Google did not pull my account for the reason of open source software licensing violations. I received a takedown notice from a game company. As did Yong.
So your statements and questions are irrelevant but must be responded to now quite often as it has become accepted among the community.
In short: My product was removed from a takedown from a game company & Google Android partner. My only issue was Google terminating my Google Checkout and Android Market accounts instead of just suspending the individual app(s) like they normally do. This is against Google's traditional ways of doing things on Market.
I do hope you get some sort of answers. I loved the stuff you made, and ended up playing Chrono Trigger with a wiimote on the iphone (and getting crazy looks at that).
Full stop. Sorry for being so trite, but you don't. Doesn't matter if you have millions in ad revenue or whatnot. Lack of customer service is one of the biggest reasons from staying away from google offerings.
Good thing Google kicked him out of the market.
This is largely a site by and for entrepreneurs. Claiming that making money from working isn't ethical isn't going to go over very well here.
I think people think of this as being very simple. I ask them to write their own MIPS R3000A -> ARM v5|v7 dynamic recompiler and get back to me. Or if it's already in place, try debugging it when memory addressing changes for 1:1 RAM offsets, the functions for certain phones don't clear ICACHE|DCACHE properly, or there's a bug in it when moving platforms. Happens. A lot.
There is some worth to that. Either way, OSS license violations wasn't why I was removed from Android and Checkout.
Another commenter, somewhere else on HN, said that Sony was getting ready to release a Playstation Phone. XPeria, I think the name was. Only makes sense they remove competition before the "legit" product comes out.
*spit on Sony. Will only use emulators/TPB rips for playstation games. Will not give any money to them in any way shape or form.
What other company removes features from products, and then sues people who restore them? And who got away with infecting tens of millions computers with rootkits?
It is a war in business: you deal with competition any way you can. It's only illegal if you're caught. And it's not like there's a corporate death sentence. Hell, even the baby bells are nearly reformed.
Google wants to have their cake and eat it too. They'll only support devs as long as it will help them get their App Store (TM) off the ground.
Good for business, probably. But definitely Evil.