sambo Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 I'm working on an atari 2600 emulator. I want to include a few games with the emulator (for reasons I will explain when I'm closer to releasing). Basically, I'm looking for a couple of open (free) licensed games to include with the emulator. Any help you can give me with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Sam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 The best thing to do would be to contact the authors of the homebrew games that you are interested in and see what they say. If you are charging people for the emulator and games then a royalty is normally paid to the programmers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sambo Posted January 31, 2011 Author Share Posted January 31, 2011 The best thing to do would be to contact the authors of the homebrew games that you are interested in and see what they say. If you are charging people for the emulator and games then a royalty is normally paid to the programmers. OK, but could I include games for which the source code was released? By releasing the source code hasn't the author declared them to be public domain. Let's just say that the emulator will be free with ad shown on the cartridge swap. Sam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 OK, but could I include games for which the source code was released? By releasing the source code hasn't the author declared them to be public domain. The author still retains copyright even if they put their source code in the public domain. That is unless they specifically relinquish their rights to it. Let's just say that the emulator will be free with ad shown on the cartridge swap. So you'll be sharing the ad revenue with the programmers of the games you use? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 It already sounds worse than existing emulators...no offense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riffraff Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 sounds like an IPhone app Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sambo Posted January 31, 2011 Author Share Posted January 31, 2011 sounds like an IPhone app Now, there's someone who's on the ball. I have found a way to get accepted into the Apple App store (but then you could sideload your ROMs), But, in order to do this, I need to have a couple of games pre-installed. I just want the iAd for revenue for the time I spent working on the emulator. And, the ad would only be show during cartridge selection. Sam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 I just want the iAd for revenue for the time I spent working on the emulator. And, the ad would only be show during cartridge selection. What about the revenue for the programmers who spent their time creating the games that your users are playing? Fairs fair. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 So use something like TIA Painter to create a "hello world"-type binary, and there ya go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Andrew Davie Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 Stella is GPL'd. I wonder what the rules are porting it to iPhone, putting around it a wrapper which serves ads and allows bin downloads, and getting income from the ads served and claiming the rest was free. Seems to be unreasonably profiting from the (free) work of others, to me. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sambo Posted January 31, 2011 Author Share Posted January 31, 2011 Stella is GPL'd. I wonder what the rules are porting it to iPhone, putting around it a wrapper which serves ads and allows bin downloads, and getting income from the ads served and claiming the rest was free. Seems to be unreasonably profiting from the (free) work of others, to me. GPLed Stella license says it fine for me to profit on my own code changes as along as I make the Stella changes available (which I will). No bin downloads (you have to add your own bins). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 (edited) Unless a homebrew author has explicitly granted you the right to redistribute his work, you can't do so. That's the "all rights reserved" part of copyright law. If an author has posted on AA, usenet, or whatever, it's only reasonable to assume you have the right to download a copy. It does NOT put the work into the public domain. Maybe you can develop a few 2600 games yourself, and put them in your package. Edited January 31, 2011 by RevEng Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sambo Posted January 31, 2011 Author Share Posted January 31, 2011 (edited) Unless a homebrew author has explicitly granted you the right to redistribute his work, you can't do so. That's the "all rights reserved" part of copyright law. If an author has posted on AA, usenet, or whatever, it's only reasonable to assume you have the right to download a copy. It does NOT put the work into the public domain. Maybe you can develop a few 2600 games yourself, and put them in your package. OK, what is the status of Combat, which has been disassembled and analyzed? I'm asking these questions because I'm a great iPhone programmer and a newbie Atari 2600 programmer. Everybody is kind of making me feel like I'm trying to rip people off. I'm not. That's why I'm asking about "public domain" status because I'm being careful not to steal from anybody. I'm not like the fly-by-night programmers on the store who steal copyrighted info to make a quick buck. Edited January 31, 2011 by sambo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 OK, what is the status of Combat, which has been disassembled and analyzed. Simple: http://www.atari.com/games/atari_flashback2_plus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 OK, what is the status of Combat, which has been disassembled and analyzed. Its copyright Atari even if its been reverse engineered. The only legitimate ways out if you want homebrew games is to :- a) Write them yourself so you can control what is done with the copyright/IP. b) Come to a financial (or otherwise) arrangement with the homebrew author(s). Why should you make money off another programmer's back? Doesn't seem very fair to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 OK, what is the status of Combat, which has been disassembled and analyzed? I'm asking these questions because I'm a great iPhone programmer and a newbie Atari 2600 programmer. Everybody is kind of making me feel like I'm trying to rip people off. I'm not. That's why I'm asking about "public domain" status because I'm being careful not to steal from anybody. I'm not like the fly-by-night programmers on the store who steal copyrighted info to make a quick buck. That's fair enough. If any 2600 games were truly public domain, you'd have every right to use them. I'd even encourage you to exercise your right to do so. But no Atari 2600 games, original or homebrew, have fallen into the public domain. That takes 50+ years or never happens, depending on who's version of the situation you believe. No 2600 games have been prematurely placed in the public domain by their authors, to my knowledge. So that leaves you with the options that GroovyBee points out. Regarding combat - reverse engineering has generally held as a fair-use exemption to copyright restrictions, and in this case the reverse engineering is for educational non-profit purposes, so it's pretty clearly fair-use. But the game is definitely copyrighted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 Anyone downloading an Atari 2600 emulator will expect to play all kinds of games with it, or at least the games popular in the system's lifetime, rather just a handful of homebrew titles that most have never heard of. That would mean licensing Atari games. Even if Atari is amenable to licensing, I'm sure the terms won't be very appealing. If you don't pursue licensing, your emulator needs an easy way to use ROM images that are downloaded later, and AFAIK, iPhone's OS does not allow downloading of arbitrary files unless jailbroken (which isn't a problem for me, but most people are afraid of jailbreaking their phones.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sambo Posted February 1, 2011 Author Share Posted February 1, 2011 (edited) Anyone downloading an Atari 2600 emulator will expect to play all kinds of games with it, or at least the games popular in the system's lifetime, rather just a handful of homebrew titles that most have never heard of. That would mean licensing Atari games. Even if Atari is amenable to licensing, I'm sure the terms won't be very appealing. If you don't pursue licensing, your emulator needs an easy way to use ROM images that are downloaded later, and AFAIK, iPhone's OS does not allow downloading of arbitrary files unless jailbroken (which isn't a problem for me, but most people are afraid of jailbreaking their phones.) iPhone Explorer - http://www.macroplant.com/iphoneexplorer/ will let you add files to an app's internal Documents directory (side loading with no jailbreaking). So, the sample games are for demo purposes. My emulator would check the Documents directory to see if any ROMS were added and load them. This end arounds Apple's restriction since the app never downloads external code. You add the ROMs by hand. Like I said, I'm a really good iPhone programmer but a poor 2600 programmer. Edited February 1, 2011 by sambo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trent Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 Anyone downloading an Atari 2600 emulator will expect to play all kinds of games with it, or at least the games popular in the system's lifetime, rather just a handful of homebrew titles that most have never heard of. That would mean licensing Atari games. Even if Atari is amenable to licensing, I'm sure the terms won't be very appealing. If you don't pursue licensing, your emulator needs an easy way to use ROM images that are downloaded later, and AFAIK, iPhone's OS does not allow downloading of arbitrary files unless jailbroken (which isn't a problem for me, but most people are afraid of jailbreaking their phones.) iPhone Explorer - http://www.macroplant.com/iphoneexplorer/ will let you add files to an app's internal Documents directory (side loading with no jailbreaking). So, the sample games are for demo purposes. My emulator would check the Documents directory to see if any ROMS were added and load them. This end arounds Apple's restriction since the app never downloads external code. You add the ROMs by hand. Like I said, I'm a really good iPhone programmer but a poor 2600 programmer. I'd love to see someone get a good 2600 emulator on IOS, why not find a good homebrew developer to partner up with and split the profits? Keep in mind a good homebrew took much longer to craft than your IOS port of Stella, so don't expect to be the majority owner 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 Anyone downloading an Atari 2600 emulator will expect to play all kinds of games with it, or at least the games popular in the system's lifetime, rather just a handful of homebrew titles that most have never heard of. That would mean licensing Atari games. Even if Atari is amenable to licensing, I'm sure the terms won't be very appealing. If you don't pursue licensing, your emulator needs an easy way to use ROM images that are downloaded later, and AFAIK, iPhone's OS does not allow downloading of arbitrary files unless jailbroken (which isn't a problem for me, but most people are afraid of jailbreaking their phones.) iPhone Explorer - http://www.macroplant.com/iphoneexplorer/ will let you add files to an app's internal Documents directory (side loading with no jailbreaking). So, the sample games are for demo purposes. My emulator would check the Documents directory to see if any ROMS were added and load them. This end arounds Apple's restriction since the app never downloads external code. You add the ROMs by hand. Like I said, I'm a really good iPhone programmer but a poor 2600 programmer. OK, then, can't wait to see the emulator. Anyway, if you want to include games for demo purposes, simply ask the various authors. Who knows, some may say yes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 Stella is GPL'd. I wonder what the rules are porting it to iPhone, putting around it a wrapper which serves ads and allows bin downloads, and getting income from the ads served and claiming the rest was free. Seems to be unreasonably profiting from the (free) work of others, to me. GPLed Stella license says it fine for me to profit on my own code changes as along as I make the Stella changes available (which I will). Yes, this is (mostly) correct. To be precise, you need to release all code that allows one to completely rebuild the binary as it exists on your device. For example, one can't just release the source and keep some 'secret sauce', nor can it be obfuscated or use a proprietary build system that nobody else can get access to. Put most simply, if I (as the Stella maintainer) wanted to build the app to place on my own device in exactly the fashion that you have on yours, the released code should include all the required files to do so. I just want to go on record saying that I fully support all legal Stella-derived ports out there. And if you choose to use Stella as the base for your project, I will be checking to make sure everything is GPL compliant. No bin downloads (you have to add your own bins). As long as you don't include the actual ROM data directly into the executable. Doing that would force the ROM source to be released under the GPL as well. This actually happened with an old Windows port of Stella; CyberStella. The author includes ROM data as header files in Stella, but wanted to keep copyright of the ROMs. That couldn't be done, and the release had to be pulled. If you include any data into a GPL app at compile-time, it automatically becomes GPL as well. Finally, if you do use Stella, I would request that a mention be made somewhere that the project is actually based on Stella, and perhaps add a thanks to the Stella Team. This isn't required by the GPL, but would be a nice thank you, especially considering that the emulator authors (myself and Brad Mott) won't be getting any portion of the pay 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sambo Posted February 1, 2011 Author Share Posted February 1, 2011 Stella is GPL'd. I wonder what the rules are porting it to iPhone, putting around it a wrapper which serves ads and allows bin downloads, and getting income from the ads served and claiming the rest was free. Seems to be unreasonably profiting from the (free) work of others, to me. GPLed Stella license says it fine for me to profit on my own code changes as along as I make the Stella changes available (which I will). Yes, this is (mostly) correct. To be precise, you need to release all code that allows one to completely rebuild the binary as it exists on your device. For example, one can't just release the source and keep some 'secret sauce', nor can it be obfuscated or use a proprietary build system that nobody else can get access to. Put most simply, if I (as the Stella maintainer) wanted to build the app to place on my own device in exactly the fashion that you have on yours, the released code should include all the required files to do so. I just want to go on record saying that I fully support all legal Stella-derived ports out there. And if you choose to use Stella as the base for your project, I will be checking to make sure everything is GPL compliant. No bin downloads (you have to add your own bins). As long as you don't include the actual ROM data directly into the executable. Doing that would force the ROM source to be released under the GPL as well. This actually happened with an old Windows port of Stella; CyberStella. The author includes ROM data as header files in Stella, but wanted to keep copyright of the ROMs. That couldn't be done, and the release had to be pulled. If you include any data into a GPL app at compile-time, it automatically becomes GPL as well. Finally, if you do use Stella, I would request that a mention be made somewhere that the project is actually based on Stella, and perhaps add a thanks to the Stella Team. This isn't required by the GPL, but would be a nice thank you, especially considering that the emulator authors (myself and Brad Mott) won't be getting any portion of the pay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sambo Posted February 1, 2011 Author Share Posted February 1, 2011 (edited) Yes, this is (mostly) correct. To be precise, you need to release all code that allows one to completely rebuild the binary as it exists on your device. For example, one can't just release the source and keep some 'secret sauce', nor can it be obfuscated or use a proprietary build system that nobody else can get access to. Put most simply, if I (as the Stella maintainer) wanted to build the app to place on my own device in exactly the fashion that you have on yours, the released code should include all the required files to do so. I just want to go on record saying that I fully support all legal Stella-derived ports out there. And if you choose to use Stella as the base for your project, I will be checking to make sure everything is GPL compliant.... Wow, thanks for the reply! I'm still on the fence whether I'm going to include an iAd or not. I will make all of the source code available upon release. I will have to serious hack some stuff out to get it to build and work on the iPhone /iPad. So, parts of it will be radically different than stella (like obviously, the keyboard handler will be almost non-existent on the phone). Any tips on making it publicly available will be helpful. Also, of course, I was definitely going to thank the Stella team for it's contributions. Sam Edited February 1, 2011 by sambo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 Wow, thanks for the reply! I'm still on the fence whether I'm going to include an iAd or not. I will make all of the source code available upon release. I will have to serious hack some stuff out to get it to build and work on the iPhone /iPad. So, parts of it will be radically different than stella (like obviously, the keyboard handler will be almost non-existent on the phone). Any tips on making it publicly available will be helpful. But aren't the App Store rules incompatible with the GPL? IIRC, Apple's rules forbid you to distribute your application outside the AppStore or allow others to do so. This might mean you can't release the source code in a way that would allow others to compile the application themselves. Also the App Store rules forbit users to copy, modify or create derivative works of an application. This is in direct conflict with the GPL, which requires you to allow just that. I think Gnu Go and recently the VLC media player have been pulled from Apple's App Store because of this problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 Wow, thanks for the reply! I'm still on the fence whether I'm going to include an iAd or not. I will make all of the source code available upon release. I will have to serious hack some stuff out to get it to build and work on the iPhone /iPad. So, parts of it will be radically different than stella (like obviously, the keyboard handler will be almost non-existent on the phone). Any tips on making it publicly available will be helpful. But aren't the App Store rules incompatible with the GPL? IIRC, Apple's rules forbid you to distribute your application outside the AppStore or allow others to do so. This might mean you can't release the source code in a way that would allow others to compile the application themselves. Also the App Store rules forbit users to copy, modify or create derivative works of an application. This is in direct conflict with the GPL, which requires you to allow just that. I think Gnu Go and recently the VLC media player have been pulled from Apple's App Store because of this problem. Yes, I forgot to mention that as well. Recent behaviour by the AppStore does seems to indicate that GPLed applications aren't compatible with their way of doing things. This is in large part why I haven't been interested in pursuing a Stella port for those devices myself. If you do manage to get around these hurdles, then more power to you. As long as the GPL is satisfied with respect to Stella, then I have no problems. But I really think you'll have your work cut out for you. Not so much in the coding, but in the licensing. EDIT: I forgot to mention, as a preemptive answer to the possible question of relicensing the codebase; the answer would be no. I've been asked several times about this in the past, and basically it's too much work to track down all the contributers to the project. And even if I could, they may not all agree, in which case the code they've contributed would have to be rewritten. Too much work for too little gain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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