Discuss: Open Source...


The Moose

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Nov 11, 2003
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Okay, so of course its beneficial, but does anybody that often look at the sources, and add/tweak any things in the code? Some big name projjects now among others... GPAdvance, OpenSnes9x, GMama, and some others. Has anyone touched these at all? Just wondering. Your thoughts.
 
You say this, but fail to note that nearly all of these emulators are either ports or use chunks of code from other emulators ;) I think emulation is one of those things that is hard to keep ethically closed-source because of all the code that is re-used in every port on a GPL /GNU basis.

However, I can't really speak for the developers of emulators on this matter as I don't have any aspiration of emulators anymore. I can only guess that their intention is to provide some stepping-stone for the coders of tommorrow, especially if someone knowledgable in emulation happens by the GP32 and then says, "By jove, there's this handheld with OPEN SOURCE emulators! I MUST CODE FOR IT!!!!" Granted that won't happen everyday given the rarity of GP32 coders to begin with, but even a small chance IS a chance, eh?
 
I don't really know about the tweaking of other peoples code, but thats because I'm not super good at anything in particular yet. I like having code available for things so I can see how things get done. Tutorials are fine, but they only go as far as they do and they dont cover everything. With code that does something you can look at how to make the end result.
 
<Random rant>
Open source or not open source the GP32 development community is generally very good at helping one another out with projects, code, concepts etc. if you ask nicely ;).

Personally I see open source as away of inviting collaborative development without being picky about who does said development :D, any community development is a good thing and just writing code is a part of development not the be all and end all. There are many other tasks then just writing code that can help.

Open source will mean that a project does not necessarily die when development ceases and if nothing more, parts of the project can live on in other derived works and that IMHO is a good thing.

If I was to use any GPL/open source code in my apps then I would feel bound by the appropriate licence and release my code under said licence if I was to release a binary (important point, most open source licences DO NOT require you to share you code just because you have edited/tweaked it, but only if you publicly release a binary compiled from said code).

If I write my own code from scratch then it is entirely up to me if I release it open source and that is my decision alone, same applies for any other developer, it’s there work after all and they can do with it as they please as long as you respect the wishes of those who (or who’s code) help you.

As for tweaking other people’s code, yes it is done, quite often infact. A lot of GP32 projects have had several ‘maintainers’ in there life span.
</Random rant>
 
Fine I edited my post, but I still find it hard to believe that there are new emulators out there which don't at least use an iota of code from a previous emulator or some GPL chunk of code. At the very least, there is the emulation community which has put forthe the time and research necessary to give these developers enough information to write their emulators.
 
Fine I edited my post, but I still find it hard to believe that there are new emulators out there which don't at least use an iota of code from a previous emulator or some GPL chunk of code. At the very least, there is the emulation community which has put forthe the time and research necessary to give these developers enough information to write their emulators.
Well. I've written two emulators from scratch without using any other people's code- Masterlator and PlusIVe. I like doing that instead of just porting GPL'd code because it's a better way of really understanding how such things work - and in the end you can say "it's all mine" ;) I think krb has written Park-O-Rama from scratch, too.

/chris
 
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