Atari violates the ScummVM's license
sev-notes.blogspot.com
sev-notes.blogspot.com
Why?
This is prohibited by several open source licenses, notably the GPL v3. Nintendo lawyers probably just got a bit squeamish and decided it wasn't worth the trouble to decide which open source licenses were alright.
Also, the source code would contain details of Nintendo's API's which they'd rather keep secret.
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As for the license incompatibility, it's kinda hard to see the game console manufacturers licensing anyone to create a derived work from their SDKs under the GPL. That's a natural consequence of their well-known business model where they use their intellectual property rights to require licenses to develop for their console. As it is, Atari violated both the GPL and Nintendo's license, so there can't necessarily be the release-the-code-and-all-is-well ending you would want here.
This is just a failed opportunity for all parties concerned, and that's sad. I completely understand where the author is coming from. "Winning" in this case is meaningless because the winnings are not what the developers actually wanted. It's like you went into a restaurant and ordered apple pie and they brought you liver, and by way of apology, they gave it to you for free. Sure, you got the liver for free, but it sure aint apple pie.
That's true. But the use of GPL specifically shows that they also wanted something else: to limit the behavior of those using it.
Thus, you can't put the blame squarely on Nintendo. They seem to have been forced to make the prohibition on open source because of the latter's licensing terms. The article mentions that the real problem was that Atari was stuck between GPL rules and Nintendo's agreements.
So if the open source community was less militant about restricting how its product can be used, things like this would be less likely.
When a developer chooses GPL, they have multiple motives. One of those motives is to insure that everybody that ever uses the software have access to the source. Another is that they want anyone that modifies and distributes the software to be obliged to give their changes back to the community. One can desire these two things, while still wanting people to use the software.
As the creators of the software the developers have the right to want all of these things. They have the right to choose this license, just like you have the right to choose a more liberal license if you don't have the same desires for your software.
We develop software under the BSD license, and it has millions of users worldwide, many of whom are commercial and don't contribute changes back and don't disclose the source to their users. We're fine with that.
We also have software licensed under the GPL. We have different motivations for the BSD vs. GPL projects...we'd like one to be a platform, used by as many people as possible. We'd like the other to have some additional obligations for anyone that makes changes and distributes them, because we're building a business directly on that software.
In the ScummVM case, the developers clearly feel like part of their mission in life is to bring Free Software to people that may not have been exposed to it. That's a worthy mission. So, merely having a lot of users would not satisfy the mission. The only positive outcome here would have been if the code continued to be used by all those new people, and in a GPL compliant fashion. If mere use would have satisfied them, they could have simply ignored the licensing issue.