Homebrew Hombrew Copyrights

[evoo1]

Would a store be allowed to sell Flashcards coming with MircoSD Cards, which have popular homebrews like Moonshell, GBA_ExPloader or DSOrganzie preinstalled?

 

[TheWingless]

Maybe somewhere in Asia, some flea market, or in an alley? But what they preinstall might not be homebrew software.

 

[Splych]

i live in canada and when i bought my fake R4 it came with a SD Card that was also fake . Had R4 Firmware, a few games and the moonshell files .

so i guess that means it might be allowed . but mostly prefered not too :\ and no homebrew they're too noob to know what that is xD

( my R4 was from a mall called pacific mall here in Ontario ! )

 

[MasterPenguin]

What was the store called?

 

[Splych]

forgot what it was called ( it was like 3 months ago and i payed cash with no receipt ! so it like saying i never bought an R4 there )

but all i know is that i will never buy from Pacific Mall again ( well for flashcarts of course ! )

 

[dinofan01]

Well the R4 comes with Moon shell; a homebrew program, so I guess so.

 

[raulpica]

It's not allowed. I remember a lot of stir on a cart... DS Homebrew Cart, or something like that, that included the most famous DS homebrew on it.

Needless to say almost the entirety of the DS community boycotted it.

Because it means that they (the flashcard producers) make MONEY using free software that should be redistributed at no cost. That's a no-no.

IIRC, Infantile Paralysiser (the author of Moonshell) some time ago asked to not use Moonshell as an OS for flashcards anymore.

 

[Whizz]

It's not allowed. I remember a lot of stir on a cart... DS Homebrew Cart, or something like that, that included the most famous DS homebrew on it.

MediaCard violated the licenses that came with the homebrew. Basically they took the sourcecode of DSOrganize and embedded it without mentioning the author. That's what pissed them off.

 

[raulpica]

It's not allowed. I remember a lot of stir on a cart... DS Homebrew Cart, or something like that, that included the most famous DS homebrew on it.

MediaCard violated the licenses that came with the homebrew. Basically they took the sourcecode of DSOrganize and embedded it without mentioning the author. That's what pissed them off.

Oh, yeah. That was the name. I didn't remember anything about embedding though...

Oh well, still they're charging for free-to-distribute software, and IIRC, that isn't allowed by most of the free software licenses out there.

 

[chuckstudios]

It isn't charging for it that's not allowed, it's modification without redistribution of the source code.

 

[Tormendo]

It's easy:
The most Homebrew Games stand unter GNU, what means you can copy and change the programm, but it is not alowed to make money with this Programms

 

[FAST6191]

@Heeroo money is not a problem http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/g...heGPLAllowMoney . The thing is the other restrictions tend to send flags up to business types (you are allowed to redistribute and the maker/owner can not stop this) so money does not tend to get involved.

Also GNU = GNU's Not Unix, GNU however have a well known license called the general public license aka GPL (v2 being the most common also known as GNU GPL) and lesser GPL (a slightly different license).

You also sell support for software or you can do an end run and go software as a service (SaaS not that it really applies in this case), I will leave you to do more research into the latter though.

This being said not all homebrew is licensed under the GPL (in fact I have seen many other licenses when playing around with homebrew over the years).

Back on topic if GPL then sure but I would go so far as to make sure links are provided to the author(s) pages and they would probably appreciate a heads up, others I would check carefully and contact if you can.
Whether you want to give the author something is up to you (if included on magazines the authors of programs generally get a copy of the magazine), what is none of my business though.

Two points to end
1) Anyone this far into electronics and the like probably knows enough to copy a file to a microSD.
2) Bundled software gets old very fast (I have seen fairly important updates to various things on a near hourly basis on occasion).

 

[DanTheManMS]

The Games N' Music cart came with a CD of homebrew games, but I believe they got permission from all the authors first.

 

[Tormendo]

sorry

Homebrew have normaly no Copyright. DSOrganize have no Copyright, Monnshell have no Copyright, ...

But i think the M3 Sakura is illegal, it based on Monnshell with a little new features. M3 Team use a other Programm to make the M3 Sakura. I think that is not right

 

[dark42]

If the homebrew is GPL then the flashcard maker can make money off the homebrew, or even sell the homebrew, however they have to provide the source code, or give you the source code on request. It is perfectly legal to sell GPL software with source code.

 

[FAST6191]

sorry

Homebrew have normaly no Copyright. DSOrganize have no Copyright, Monnshell have no Copyright, ...

But i think the M3 Sakura is illegal, it based on Monnshell with a little new features. M3 Team use a other Programm to make the M3 Sakura. I think that is not right

Copyright law is a very complex issue (I do not even pretend to be anything other than a slightly informed layperson) but in most countries copyright is automatic (trademarks and patents are not though) and you generally have to disown a work from a copyright standpoint (and that gets complex as well).

Re Sakura I believe the original author of moonshell was one of the people behind it so being the owner he can do various things (not sure though if anything was GPL and the knockon effects of that though).... on the other hand patented formats (namely MPEG 1 video and mpeg1 audio layer 2 for the video, not sure about OGG and a few of the audio formats that are supported) and I know FFmpeg and similar was used in the encoder I presume the use of some of the decoding libraries also owe something to a project like that.

I think the general idea is do not be a bastard (make a point of contacting the authors) and try to adhere to an license as best as you can.

 

[Tormendo]

I think the M3 Sakura is not a real new Programm(Firmware). It's only a better Version of Monnshell with "little new features"

In Germany is no automatical Copyright, so i don't now any thing of this^^

The easyest way is to ask the autors. That's all i think

 

[Tikker]

But i think the M3 Sakura is illegal, it based on Monnshell with a little new features. M3 Team use a other Programm to make the M3 Sakura. I think that is not right

Sakura was developed by Moonlight

aka the original creator of moonshell

 

[Tormendo]

I know and that is the point. M3 Sakura become help from Moonlight! That is unfair!

O

 

[FAST6191]

I know and that is the point. M3 Sakura become help from Moonlight! That is unfair!

O

I fail to see how that applies to anything in this thread and moreover if I want to have a reasonable assurance that a good job will be done then I pay/hire a guy with a good track record.