How about putting Mupen64 on sourceforge?

What about establishing a sourceforge project called Mupen64, loading the sources into CVS, creating configure scripts, declaring the license to GPL and starting developing Mupen together?

We will need GPL'ed plugins for GFX and audio. Perhaps we should establish a separate project for plugins (like http://sourceforge.net/projects/peops). Glide64 (GPL) should be easy to port into Linux, and Daedalus plugins (being under GPL) are good candidates to be ported. Luckily there's already a very good input plugin by Blight.

After getting all the stuff integrated and working together, we could start incorporating Mupen into Linux distributions. I'm volunteering to make Debian packages.

In the end we should have an emulator like ZSNES which is actively developed, is included in most of the distributions, and is completely licensed under GPL to avoid legal issues.

Anyway, nice job Hacktarux and Blight and thanks for supporting the Linux community!

Tell me what you think
King Hiss

Sourceforge project would make it easier for people to participate in the project, nothing else. I bet many Linux people feel it's a bit odd that the emulator is developed in a message board... It's not essential of course, but I see no reason why you shouldn't put it up. CVS should be much better than sending patches via email.

Glide64 is for glide cards only, but I remember seeing Glide3 libraries for Linux. Anyway, glide is kinda obsole and not much of use to most people so...

Most important thing right now is to get GFX plugins that are under GPL. As I said, the best bet would be to port a plugin that is under GPL, it would be most useful for us. You said there's no problem with audio plugin which is a great news. Blight's input plugin is well enough for input.

When we have complete emulator with open source plugins (and I don't mean just that the source is available, it has to be licensed under open source license), not until then will we see it in Debian and Redhat and other big distributions. For example, Debian can't include the emulator if any of the plugins is not under a free software license like GPL and I bet Redhat will have problems with any non-free license also.

The license issues are very important here, otherwise the project is out of use for the community.

Anyway, would you at least add configure scripts to make it easier to compile for Linux users?

It will be included in distros.

Emulators are completely legal unless they include things like BIOS images that are copyrighted. ZSNES is included in many distros, including Debian, which has perhaps the most strict rules when it comes to legality. There's also things like gnuboy, fceultra, VICE, UAE, and many more emulators included in various Linux distros and all of these are completely legal, in both USA and rest of the world.

mp3 stuff is completely another case: Redhat for example doesn't include some mp3 stuff because there exists some patents concerning the mp3 format.

Bottom line: there are _no_ legal problems with emulators when it comes to distributing them in Linux distros.

There is only one problem: if the emulator is not fully open source compliant, many distributions will refuse to include it. Every Linux user should understand why open source is important so I'm not going to tell about it here...

You can take a look at http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages and see that ZSNES and other emus can be found there. And, if Debian can include it, then any Linux distro can include it without any legal problems.

I have to add a few things...

First of all, yes, the roms are some sort of a problem. But you don't have to get commercial roms to use the emulator, there are also lots of public domain roms as we all know. You know ZSNES is actually in "contrib" section of Debian packages, which means the program itself is free, but reguires non-free software to run (this does not actually hold because you can run ZSNES with public domain roms as well but what the heck). And if ZSNES is not included in Redhat, well, that's their problem if they have so few packages (Debian distribution holds 7 CDs you know....), and most probably has nothing to do with legal problems.

Open source is a misleading term. That's why I usually like to talk about free software. Free software is more than just having the source available, or having the program distributed free of charge. GPL is perhaps the best free software license and I suggest you use it in Mupen64 and in all the plugins now and the future (as has been done mostly). Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for a good definition of free software.

So, there are no problems with code that is under GPL, but if we have some code like TR64 OGL plugin or an audio plugin ripped from UltraHLE, this code is certainly not free software (I bet it doesn't even qualify the OSI specification at http://opensource.org/). This code is useless to most Linux distributions that care at least a bit about legality, since the code has no valid license, we don't know who holds the copyright, who has made modifications, etc. Some of the code is even more clearly illegal (UltraHLE...). So, unless Mupen64 qualifies as free/open source software, the distributions simply can't include the program, at least not as whole, not even the binary (because the source has to be available too - that's the meaning of open source).

If Debian for example was to include Mupen now, it probably has to rip off all the non-free code first, which would make the program quite useless. I don't know what is contained in the Gentoo package, but if it has the TR stuff and anything else that is non-free, they certainly are not caring about legality. Why not stealing code from Epsilon and Realityman (UltraHLE...) and including it in Gentoo? It sure is open source because the source code is available, right? Nooooooo....

Usually, people tend to use plugins to work around the GPL. That's why some emulators like gnuboy didn't even implement a plugin system (http://gnuboy.unix-fu.org/src/browse/README). Plugins are good though, but just don't make the mistake at using them to work around the GPL. I think it might even be illegal to include any non-GPL plugins in the Mupen64 source and binary distribution. Users can still use non-free plugins, though, you just can't include them in the distribution if you want to comply with GPL, which is a major drawback.

Now, this is why we need plugins under GPL and we already have GPL'ed input plugin from Blight, which is cool. Let's do the same thing for GFX and audio now.

I hope this clears things up.

Hacktarux:

Yeah, I hope the TR64 plugin license gets cleared out.

Doesn't Daedalus have open source sound plugin (although written for DirectX)? That would perhaps be a good start for someone who has time and skills.

blight:

People will start including Mupen64 into distros if it stays under GPL and gets GPL'ed plugins. This is my point. We don't have to worry about that, the only thing we have to worry is to keep everything under GPL so Mupen64 can be used extensively everywhere.

So, there's no rush, but the goal should be to create a complete N64 emulator (not only the core, but also plugins) under GPL. Don't you agree? If you agree, then I'm (and I bet many others are) willing to help in developing Mupen64, otherwise I don't want to bother.