I have several copies of Yuzu in multiple backup locations. They're all local. Fuck Nintendo.
this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2024
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My suggestion, get as many private copies of emulators you can before they go after all the Github ones. Seems to be more and more take-downs are happening lately.
It really is too bad we dont have a federated github alternative. I know theres some projects in development, but I can see the emulator scene getting harder and harder to get into if popular repos go down. Decades of work, gone.
Git is a distributed version control system. There doesn't have to be a single copy of the repo on which everything depends. It's a choice, and an understandable one, to treat one copy as authoritative, but there's no reason to deposit if it becomes unavailable. Any copy of it will do.
What GitHub provides that's hard to do without it is not the repository but the stuff that goes around it: issue tracking, communication tools, discoverability, etc.
So if people take the distributed nature of Git seriously and make sure they all have a local copy of the repo, we won't lose the repo itself to Nintendo's actions. But we may lose the tools that make it easy to coordinate work on the repo.
Before we had GitHub and issue trackers we had mailing lists and Usenet groups. Not as convenient, bit they allowed people to coordinate work on open source software without a central, corporately owned point of failure. Maybe we should be looking to the early days of FOSS for ideas about how to make these projects resilient against corporate persecution. Not for the exact tools but for decentralized ways of coordinating collaboration.
If you (or anyone else) has any suggestions for emulators/tools to mirror, send them my way. I already have a few on my Forgejo server https://git.ngni.us/mirrors
Don't forget to mirror appropriate versions of the scarce dependencies. Sirit, the SPIR-V assembler, for example.
We do have a federated GitHub alternative. Perhaps not too mature yet, but it does indeed exist. Forgejo
I just discovered that this is Codeberg - I've seen a lot of projects there and I had no idea that it was an instance of Forgejo
Originally, it wasn't. Codeberg used to run Gitea. Forgejo is a fork of that, which came later.
Not really federated. You can't, for example, raise issues or set PR requests from another instance.
They have been working on Federation: https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls?q=&type=all&sort=&state=closed&labels=79349&milestone=0&project=0&assignee=0&poster=0&archived=false
Yep its not nearly done....but I have a server and running through testing. git itself is fairly federated, but the support structures (PRs/MRs, review process, easy wiki/issue tracking, etc...) is where the real work is at.
I'm running as server as well, but have not tested federation (yet).
Nice! Them and gitea are really stable!
I thought codeberg was just a really well maintained and customized gitea instance...?
They have been doing so for a while now.
It really is too bad we dont have a federated github alternative. I know theres some projects in development, but I can see the emulator scene getting harder and harder to get into if popular repos go down. Decades of work, gone.
There is Radicle which is a peer-to-peer forge.
Edit: Don’t expect all the features of GitHub or Forgejo though.
Get a device or two, as well.
Your computer may very well get obsolete when it comes to software support.
A handheld or console meant to be an emulation console won't have to move through time. It'll be as it is after the day you're done setting it up, like a hacked console.
Your PC has to keep up with web standards, codecs, online goings on but dedicated, offline devices do not. I may choose an SBC to do this to, and make a copy of the partition housing the emulators and boot drive for safe keeping.
I also have two different raspberrypi emulation images. Since those are literally everywhere, it's a sure bet you'll be able to find one to put the sd card into, even years from now.
Just don't play Nintendo games lol. That's what I do. I didn't grow up with these 'classics' and I don't feel like getting into these as an adult. 🤷♂️
This is probably a good argument for torrents. Lame that something as gray as a simple emulator is catching flak but Nintendo can't really play whack-a-mole with dozens or hundreds of random seeders
Emulators aren’t even grey, it’s settled law that they are legal.
Gray as in that's what Nintendo believes and that's how Nintendo will act, and they have lawyers on payroll to back it up. Precedents are like crosswalks, you're best off acknowledging the ignorance of the dude who's apt to run you over
Like that's stopped the current SCOTUS
Link for N64?
Emulators should provide torrents for releases.
Stop making me sad sir!!!!
There is no federated guthub because git itself is. Just clone the repo - you're part of the network already!
It really is too bad we dont have a federated github alternative.
There is no "open" alternative for... the exact reasons some code is removed from Github/Lab/Bucket/whatever.
Someone submits a DMCA request or something similar? Microsoft and so forth will process that and decide if it is valid and so forth.
If you are running your own instance? That request goes to you and you probably don't have lawyers or just the willpower to determine if it is valid or not.
And the federation approach further complicates that. Because good luck explaining the concept of federation to a judge who thinks everyone who uses a computer is a hacker and doesn't understand why a DMCA to one instance didn't propagate to your instance and why it is an honest mistake. All while the Nintendos of the world are arguing for your wages to be garnished for the rest of your life.
And the other aspect is what anyone who runs even a semi-public instance of... anything learns. People are monsters. If you have image uploads you will have CSAM.
And the last aspect is just practicality. My github is a large part of my CV. I work on projects that I think are fun AND that I think will look good to people I am trying to convince to give me a job. Emulation is already a grey area (it isn't quite porn, but it can make you look like a liability to many companies). But if you have to link someone to a complete no name site because you are trying to avoid legal action? You aren't getting hired.
You can have an offline gitlab/forgejo and a public github. I do most of my work against a local gitlab, and mirror up to github for anything that needs to be shared.
I have a couple of projects mirrored down to my gitlab as a backup, and they are not online, so can't realistically be DCMAd.
I mean, you can just as easily just keep a project cloned if the purpose is an offline copy.
That doesn't change all the liability problems with running a public repo as well as why most coders aren't interested in a fly by night one that is designed to escape legal consequences.
Target them all you want, the links are on gdrive and mega and the owners will just move to advertising them somewhere else, Tumblr, throwaway eBay listings, Spotify playlists,... here.
Entire romsets for gb, gbc, gba, N64, SNES, etc have all been on piratebay for over a decade, not to mention the 4-5 300Gb+ curated sets out there.
Good luck there, Nintenbros. Keep swinging that axe. We'll keep growing heads.
It also helps that the golden age is over and each system now only gets around 10 or so exclusives worth a shit so there's less Switch games needed for a good set compared to past generations. Thanks, Nintendo. Quality over quantity.
The main thing they are trying to do is make it more difficult to find this stuff via google, which tbh is still easy without reddit.
But even Switch homebrew has been a pain. Most of it is one off software made years ago because no sane dev wanted to actually keep up with all the firmware releases and limited control of CFW. Github/Gitlab repos keep getting banned left and right for tools not even related to piracy.
3DS has full fledged apps with teams behind everything and HShop which makes it very easy for everyone. Switch still doesn't have a definitive method of handling NSP/XCIs, and all the auto download internet repos are invite only to hide from Nintendo.
I'm really hoping someone finds some serious hardware bypass in their next console after what they did to the emulation scene. They really deserve to go through the insane R4 piracy age all over again for nuking everything online.
Not to mention discord channels you have to be invited to.
The big ones:
Now Nintendo is seeking the court’s approval to actually subpoena Reddit for user records. These records, if shared, could identify additional moderators or users tied to the r/SwitchPirates subreddits. Nintendo argues that these records are critical to building their case against others in the alleged piracy ...
In addition to requesting records from Reddit, Nintendo's filing also makes appeals for information from other companies, including domain registrars such as Namecheap and GoDaddy, along with firms such as Cloudflare, Github, Google, and Discord.
Subpoenaing Reddit for user records because some guy emulated a videogame made for your crappy handheld console.
Kinda weird that I'm rooting for reddit, a company I hate, against Nintendo, a company that usually brings me joy.
But here we are.
As a lifelong Nintendo fan, I've been rooting against them in pretty much everything for close to a decade at this point.
Any time Nintendo is involved in a legal case, you can pretty safely assume they're probably wrong.
On the other hand, r/switchpirates is transparently a community for the express purpose of pirating Nintendo games for their current system. It’s one of the rare cases where I think they probably can make a slam-dunk legal case to shut it down.
To shut it down, sure. To get information on accounts simply for posting there? They can fuck off.
Nintendo is definitely overstepping with that request, but I can't say I feel bad for the subset of Redditors shitting their pants because they admitted to distributing* ROMs. Trusting a corporation to protect you from the consequences of your actions is a level of stupidity beyond deserving sympathy.
*Specifically distributing. Not downloading. Not discussing. Distributing.
They used to be pretty strict about posting links. If that's still the case, it's literally just a discussion forum discussing and promoting something illegal and not necessarily doing anything illegal. I'll wager that the judge would only sign off on information from users that Nintendo already has enough evidence against. But I guess we'll see.