Creator Of PS1 Emulator DuckStation Threatens To "Shut The Whole Thing Down" Following License Change

LalSalaamComrade@lemmy.ml to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 241 points –
Creator Of PS1 Emulator DuckStation Threatens To "Shut The Whole Thing Down" Following License Change
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What's so bad about not permitting commercial uses?

Bigger problem is the No Derivatives clause of the CC licence, as compiling or forking the code creates a derivative, so it's now a project nobody is allowed to use (or distribute) in any other form than their exact, precompiled releases.

In fact, as the GitHub terms of service specifically require you to allow forking - as recently demonstrated by the WinAmp project - I wonder if CC ND is even possible to be used in GitHub in the first place.

He changed the license without consulting the other committers. Other that that not much.

He said somewhere that he did ask a top contributor if they care, and they didn't. He also said that he rewrote a bunch of code to be able to change the license.

I can't verify this, but it doesn't seem like he infringend on someones copyright. Small changes (e.g. a few lines) don't even (necessarily) qualify for copyright (just like the few sentences I wrote here likely don't).

He claims to have gotten permission from the contributors... not sure where you heard that they didn't.

To be fair, there are NC software licenses out there under umbrellas like post-open source, copyfair, & copyfarleft. Creative Commons is wrong for this application—& ND is even more questionable—but choosing to follow these other movements is something you can choose to do or support if the noncommercial clause aligns with your philosophy (but incompatibles with GPL & friends can prove difficult).