The creator of the popular PlayStation 1 emulator DuckStation, known as stenzek, has made significant changes to the project's licensing, causing controversy in the emulation community. Originally open-source under the General Public License, DuckStation's license was changed first to PolyFormStrict License and then to CC-BY-NC-ND. These changes prohibit commercial use and derivatives of the emulator, including packaging it for distribution.Stenzek explained that the license changes were made to deter parties who had violated the previous license by not attributing the work and stripping copyright information. He also mentioned that preventing packagers from distributing modified versions was a 'beneficial side-effect' due
  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    2 months ago

    the license changes were made to deter parties who had violated the previous license [GPL] by not attributing the work and stripping copyright information

    That is a violation of the GPL. Changing the license isn’t going to stop license violations. It’s really unfortunate when software gets into legal hell.

    • jsomae@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 months ago

      no it isn’t. The old versions are still GPL. permission from contributors was attained.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 month ago

        no it isn’t. The old versions are still GPL. permission from contributors was attained.

        Stripping copyright information is a violation of the GPL. friend_of_satan meant that. He clearly did not mean changing the license with consent of all contributors.