Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
it is clear that the use of such emulators is primarily for use with non-free ROMs [with] few exceptions
By that logic, the use of media player software is primarily for use with non-free music, which outnumbers music distributed under a license for free cultural works. And the primary purpose for a PDF viewer is for viewing non-free documents, which outnumber documents distributed under a license for free cultural works.
If the issue is with the fact that only 27 games work, I can dig up more exceptions. For example, an NES emulator is useful to run software produced for the PlayPower project: http://playpower.org/
it is not worth the likely risk of lawsuit to include "Nintendo" emulators
On what grounds would NOA sue Red Hat? As for patent infringement, the patents on the NES expired half a decade ago. As for contributory copyright infringement, as I understand it, an emulator packaged with one or more free games appears to "be capable of substantial noninfringing uses", as the U.S. Supreme Court put it in Sony v. Universal. Another popular GNU/Linux distribution demonstrates this noninfringing use by packaging a free NES game; is it in trouble as well? https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/+package/efp
To put it another way, what's the specific legal difference between FCEUX and DOSBox? http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=174907
Once we characterize this difference, can someone update the Licensing/SoftwareTypes page to mention emulators that will not be packaged despite the availability of free software for the emulated platform?
A few points of note:
1) This is not debian-legal, thus nothing said here has any affect on Ubuntu. Neither will we be speculating about whether Ubuntu is doing anything illegal or risky.
2) Whether or not Nintendo has sufficient legal grounds to sue anyone for any reason, they've made it very clear how they feel about Nintendo emulators. They're willing to sue, and Red Hat has sufficient financial resources to make itself a lucrative target.
Thus, we're not permitting Nintendo emulators in Fedora.
I'm not going to spend time making a blacklist either, as it is simpler to deal with such items on a case-by-case basis, rather than to have people loophole my words (aha, this is a FAMICOM emulator!).
I can understand your frustration, but there are other Fedora repos which would be happy to include such items.
~spot
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Damian Yerrick -
Tom Callaway