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Re: LCC and blobs



Josh Triplett <josh.trip@verizon.net> writes:

> Hamish Moffatt wrote:
>> If the emulators were extended to be able to fetch some basic ROM images 
>> off the internet by themselves (eg via HTTP), could they go in main?
>
> As an interesting additional point, this isn't just a hypothetical
> scenario: the ZSNES emulator (in the Windows version, not yet ported to
> the GNU/Linux version) has the ability to connect to the ConsoleClassix
> (paid) service, download ROM images into memory (locking them on the
> server so that no more ROM images exist than actual cartridges owned by
> ConsoleClassix), and play them.  All of those ROM images are still
> proprietary and sourceless.  Suppose the GNU/Linux version had this
> functionality.  Would we still put ZSNES in contrib?  I don't know that
> I have a consistent answer to that particular question.

If the capability is editable, so that people can try to circumvent
the locking, or unlock and keep a copy, yes -- it's still Free, and
still provides useful functionality even if part of it is an ad.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu



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