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this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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One of the most entitled takes I’ve ever read.
The guy built software and opened sourced it. People started packaging it for their favourite distribution repositories and then users started coming to him for support on problems he didn’t create!
It’s like if you were a farmer selling eggs and some kids bought your eggs and started throwing them at people’s houses and then instead of the cops arresting the kids they come arrest you for selling eggs. It’s bullshit!
How does that analogy make any sense? No one has done anything malicious to him. He released open source software, got mad and revoked the open source license for newer versions, then got even more mad when people continued using the old open source version. Which is a problem he brought on himself. And his continued tantrums still won't keep distros from packaging the only version they even can package.
He got mad because people kept bugging him to fix problems created by other people which he has no control over. His “tantrums” are his way of re-asserting control over his life.
Open source dev burnout from support requests is a real and widespread phenomenon. When a software developer releases the fruits of their hard work they are doing the wider community a service. When large numbers of people begin to contact the developer for support the effect can be overwhelming even though every individual request may be legitimate and non-malicious.
In the case of packaging errors created by a third party not in contact with (let alone under the control of) the developer, these support requests for dealing with unsolvable and irrelevant (in the developer’s eyes) problems can be absolutely maddening.
I am quite sure the developer would have had no issues with people doing what they did as long as they accepted the responsibility to fix their own issues without contacting him. The fact that they did not do so (and therefore caused him grief) is negligent even if it isn’t malicious.
Is the issue with the packaging, or that only an outdated version can be packaged?
He could fix the license, then people would push the up to date version and users wouldn't report old bugs.
And now it's even worse. Great work.
The solution would be to file trademark and use trademark law to to grant use of the name only to packages that comply with certain mandates. That's how Mozilla handles it. Source code license is the completely wrong approach for this thing.
An approach without tantrums would be to ask Linux packagers to handle packaging needs directly upstream at DuckStation and whenever a new release is made with a bit of scripting to file an automated update request for the packages. I would rope in Arch AUR, Debian Sid, a dedicated Ubuntu PPA, Fedora RPMFusion or a Fedora COPR, and Flathub this way.
Good luck doing that with an emulator which is already a Grey area.
He changed the license in the first place because someone took unpublished code from him and contributed it to another project. He had permission from his other contributors when he did that but people still went on GPL crusades against him.
Now it’s the issue of people re-packaging his releases for other package managers such as AUR (which is against the license) and doing so incorrectly which leads to support requests from the users of broken packages.
There’s a whole community of people who have turned hostile to this guy over his decisions but it comes off as a sense of entitlement on their part. This is after all an emulation community which is full of people who simply use these tools to run pirated old games. They don’t understand the hard work that goes into a sophisticated emulator. They just want more, better, faster! Gimme gimme gimme is all they know!
What was this "unpublished code"? Something committed to a public git repository where all the code is under GPL? You act as if redistribution of GPLed code was somehow illegal or at least immortal. It's not. It's the foundation of the whole idea behind open source.
If that "unpublished code" was stored only on his hard drive and a hacker obtained it illegally, that would be an entirely different topic but that's completely outside the scope of upstream source code license. That would be an outright crime. Developers at AMD, for example, write Linux driver code for AMD hardware. Then before that code leaves AMD, AMD lawyers need to clear it before it gets published to the Linux Kernel Mailing List for review. Sometimes code is not cleared, so the developers need to rewrite it. As long as the code is behind closed doors, it's not published (therefore the GPL does not yet apply) but as soon as it's posted for review, it's public GPL code and everybody can to everything to it as far as the GPL permits.
This is even spelled out in GNU's official GPL FAQ. Edit: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic
That's not how AUR works, it builds from source using instructions, it's not repackaging at all
The point is that someone posted this guy’s project to the AUR with a badly written PKGBUILD and it was failing to build. This led to him getting tons of support requests which he could not help with since he doesn’t control that AUR build.
He also couldn’t get it removed from AUR without giving the admins his personal information. Completely understandable given the history of console companies going after emulator developers. The guy has been doxxed and seems close to being run right out of the open source community by a bunch of zealots.
You can just not publish your actual contacts and choose what you will and wont offer support on your public facing persona.
That's what I do 😁. No real names unless it's something I don't care about.
I only support a couple of pip/composer/ect...and others package it up for any specific is or implementation. I always tell people "I will accept new prs" but if say I'm on vacation, I just don't look at the package. If it's bad enough, someone can fork and everyone else can move on with their lives. Hasn't happened yet on the couple of packages that got popular (?) but it's the lifecycle of open source.
But then you can’t offer support to users of your upstream code.
This is an issue of open source etiquette and there’s no technical solution that can solve it. There have been numerous passionate developers who have been run right out of open source by well-meaning users who simply don’t know the protocol around contacting a developer for support.
Am I misunderstanding something? Was he not present in his own discord server meant for troubleshooting?
For troubleshooting issues with his code. Not with broken packages created by others that he has no power to fix.
Which was due to HIS actions
Most people arguing from analogies are doing so because they can't actually make a coherent argument against THING so they make a bad analogy and then expect you to unwind the 17 ways the analogy and the thing are different. This being a waste of time. I'll just tell you that your analogy is trash and you should do better.