Hey man. Iāll write you a book. Yeah Iāve been talking to them and at least they are very cordial. However, we spoke to a lawyer and they said that we are not selling software, we selling hardware and charging a service fee for the installation. This is the part where they argue that we canāt include this with a commercial product and I argue that preloading free software (that the end user is going to install anyway) is not the same as selling this software. We are just settling an āease of lifeā service. Itās an impasse.
The main thing they use as ammo are the cores that are under a non commercial license, and thatās where we donāt see eye to eye. I understand we arenāt supposed to profit from the software but I argue that we are not since we pay people to do the install on our end. I donāt agree that it is as clear as they say and the lawyer I had look at it told me he thought a judge would see this as silly.
However, we donāt need drama and I really like what the devs have created. I absolutely do not want to cause any harm to the software. I do feel like units like the sen pi are actually good for the community because they extend the reach of the community, create jobs, initiate new people into the lakka world etc. This means more people contributing to their cause and Patreon as well. I think that is the big picture that people are missing. It benefits everyone.
I think the perspective is narrow. People love to paint others as corporate scum online. This is extremely naive and disingenuous. People love a cause that letās then feel smug and self righteousā¦ Do these same people also have to pay bills, eat, etc.? Is all money evil? Well maybe, but this stupid society forces us to have it. Iām not going to apologize for trying to make sure our employees eat. I wonāt apologize for trying to have a small business. I donāt want to work for a massive corporate monster. The irony is that many who have this, āfuck these guys for being greedy,ā attitude end up having to work for a big evil corruption to pay the bills. The smug righteousness is a bit silly from that perspective. People said I was greedy after the splitā¦ They said I took vacationsā¦ Etc. Well we know the sums quoted were way off and the vacations were us getting products for fenekā¦ but yes, I wanted to make money. I will not apologize. I want to create things the community likes, I want to employ good people, and I want to create content, games, music, etc. I donāt see how doing that (as opposed to working for a corporation) makes me evil. I wonāt try to please the haters. Maybe their perspectives will broaden one day, but the hate is too deep maybe.
Ok Iām going on about the philosophy of moneyā¦ Letās be pragmatic; if the libretro guys wonāt budge I donāt plan to fightā¦ Whatās probably going to happen is that we will sell out of the small quantity we have (already paid install labor) then just cut our labor costs and sell a few diy kits. We could fork it and remove a few cores (just to force users to download them), but that seems circuitous and ridiculous to me. Iād rather leave this alone and do something else if itās going to harm the community. I really wish they would just work with us. We would do videos, make hardware, and give them some profits so they can keep doing what they loveā¦ That would be positive for the communityā¦ but everyone would have to get over the āmoney is evilā thing. I imaging there are some truly predatory companies out there, but I would never want to harm the team or community even if our philosophies are different.
I understand how they must feel like they worked hard on something and now others are benefiting. This is a closed source mentality. If they feel that way perhaps open source is not what they should do. Itās about communityā¦ Community code, community hardware, etc. Itās a collaboration. Policing the software over a logo and some non-commercial cores really goes against what open source is supposed to be, imo. This is Linux. Hardware vendors have sold computers and laptops for ages with he software preloadedā¦ Even Ubuntuās trademarks are ok in this instance because they are selling the hardware and the service, not the software. Red Hat is a billion dollar company working in the open source would. Itās ok to make money. We all have to get by. Hell, itās even legal to charge money to install closed source software.
To sum it upā¦ I think some of the smug āholier than thouā rhetoric is getting out of hand. The eye rolling and chants of, āthis is disgusting,ā every time something unoriginal pops up on Kickstarter are getting a little tired. You know, I feel jealous too and some of the schemes people throw online then make way too much on. I want to hate them, but really they figured out a way to not have up get a dead end job. So that is sometime. Yes, some stuff is truly predatory, but some is not. Some things can actually be a good thing for the communityā¦ If people could just stop screaming, āscum,ā every time someone tries to make a living.
If people would rather support totally original stuff there is the music, the shirts, and the game project will get going in a couple months.
We will see how this goes. Worst case, well have diy boxes and tutorials.
