I understand what you're saying, but we see things differently. You say I'm stealing the code, but the code is from Kronos and Yabuse. All the Seta GX code is identical to Kronos and Yabuse, and the other part of the code is for it to work on the Wii. So, according to what you're saying, whoever created Seta GX stole the Yabuse and Kronos code. I didn't rush to upload anything; it's been almost a year and a half since the last version came out. And if it weren't made with AI, would it be different? You don't know how many months I've spent day and night making this work without any profit. In the end, very few people appreciate it, and that's the least of it. The important thing here is to share; that's what this page is for. Everyone here knows who the original work is. Without that work, there almost certainly wouldn't be an emulator, just like many others that have been ported to the Wii. There's no bad intention here, just sharing. Besides, it's a fork; that's what they're created for.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding (or intentionally conflating) how open-source development and hardware porting actually work.
Evoca using code from YabaSanshiro and Kronos is not "stealing", it is a standard practice that he already openly acknowledged from day one. Both YabaSanshiro and Kronos are forks of the abandoned Yabause project. What makes Seta GX special is that it isn't just a simple clone; it is a heavily optimized port specifically rewritten to utilize the Wii's Hollywood GPU through a hardware accelerated renderer instead of slow software graphics, alongside a custom SH2 dynarec designed to make it run properly on the console's limited resources. That is actual low-level engineering, not piracy.
There is a massive, undeniable difference between adapting an upstream emulator architecture to target a specific console's hardware and what you did: cloning an active, custom-built project, feeding its unreleased dynarec code into an AI to slap some automated fixes on it, and rushing a compiled release just to beat the original author to their own explicitly announced update.
The time since the last official release is completely irrelevant. The moment a developer announces that they are actively working on a new version and will release it soon on GitHub, basic community etiquette dictates that you either wait for their release or contribute via a Pull Request. Rushing a separate fork to bypass the author isn't "sharing in the spirit of open source", it is a text-book definition of opportunistic sniping.
Nobody is undermining the hours you claim to have spent on your past RetroArch cores, but using that past work as a shield to justify breaking etiquette on an active, separate project is a textbook false equivalency. If your true and only intention was simply to share and collaborate without taking credit, you would have submitted your AI modifications directly to Evoca's repository instead of pushing an undocumented fork that just copied his README.
Sounds like you're just talking for other people though. I get you're offended somehow even though it's common practice in the emuscene to compile new builds based on source changes in basically every open source emulator ever to get a "sneak peek" of upcoming features or compatibility. I mean if Evoca really didn't want people to compile builds before an official new Seta GX release then he could just as well make the github private and only publish the code at release similar to Wii64 and WiiSX, but I suspect he doesn't care and you've taken it upon yourself to make a mountain out of a molehill.
You are completely missing the point and confusing two entirely different things.
There is a massive difference between compiling a nightly build straight from an author's commit history to test a preview of upcoming features and what happened here. Compiling source-clean git builds is common practice. Cloning an active repository, injecting external automated AI code into it, and publishing it as a competitive standalone release right before the author's announced update is not "just compiling a build", it is an opportunistic fork that breaks basic scene etiquette.
Furthermore, the argument of "if he didn't want this, he should have made the GitHub private" is the most toxic, anti-open-source mindset imaginable. It shifts the blame onto the developer for being transparent and sharing his progress with the community, rather than holding people accountable for their lack of basic respect. Open source relies on mutual respect and collaboration, not on exploiting openness to frontrun active developers.
Nobody is "making a mountain out of a molehill" here. What I'm pointing out here is that this kind of behavior is exactly what causes talented developers to burn out, give up on the scene, or archive their repositories forever. If you can't see the difference between a clean compilation and an undocumented AI-patched fork designed to beat an active dev to their own release, then you are part of the problem.
The whole point of the GNU public license which this project is licensed under is that you're free to do whatever you want with the code, as is as long as you publish the changes made. The license itself is the permission to compile and modify the code as you wish. Cheloruiz did that, he's done nothing wrong and is being unfairly besmirched over some kind of unwritten etiquette rules which I haven't seen literally anywhere else in the emuscene outside of some late 1990s dev drama.
And here you are fundamentally confusing legal compliance with community etiquette.
Nobody is arguing that he violated the terms of the GNU GPL. Yes, the license legally permits anyone to fork, modify, and redistribute the code. But having the legal right to do something does not make you immune to criticism for being opportunistic, nor does it magically erase the social consequences of your actions. A license governs the code; etiquette governs the community.
Claiming that open-source etiquette doesn't exist outside of "1990s drama" is completely disconnected from the reality of modern development. The core pillar of modern open-source collaboration is the Pull Request workflow. If you identify fixes or want to provide updates, you submit them upstream to the main repository to help the author and keep the project unified. You don't create an undocumented, competitive standalone fork patched with AI code just to frontrun an active developer right before their announced release. That isn't "besmirching" him; it is calling out bad behavior.
When people bypass basic respect and use open-source licenses as a shield to undermine active developers, those developers simply stop sharing their work. You can wave the GPL text around all you want, but if this sort of behavior drives the few actual low-level programmers away from the Wii scene, your precious license won't have any new code left to protect.
I think the issue is a bit more complex than that. I understand that using GitHub stems from the idea of collaborative work and community building. But taking someone else's work and modifying it independently doesn't necessarily reflect that idea of collaboration. Reaching out to the creator and trying to work together might have been a better approach, I don't know if you tried that, but if it had been possible, the project could have grown even more with the support of multiple people.
Thank you for actually understanding the nuance of the situation. You hit the nail on the head regarding developer integrity and intention; open source is a social contract built on mutual respect, not just a legal license to frontrun active projects. If the true goal had been collaboration and growth for the Wii scene, this would have been handled through a Pull Request or direct communication with Evoca.