Bug#137355: RFP: PCSX -- Playstation emulator
On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 10:28:39PM -0500, Frederic Briere wrote:
>
> The main problem I see with including PCSX in Debian is that it requires
> a copy of the Sony PlayStation BIOS. (It might be theoretically
> possible to use the free BIOS from ePSXe, but I doubt anyone would do
> that.)
That's not much of a problem. Does the free BIOS work at all? If it doesn't,
we'd just stick this package in contrib untill it does.
> Now, this hasn't prevented e.g. VICE from being packaged, but in that
> case the ROMs are easily available from upstream, and whoever owns
> Commodore's old IP doesn't seem to care. On the other case, PSX BIOSes
> usually come from warez sites, while mainstream sites shy away from
> them. I'm not sure if telling users to Google for ROMs would be an
> acceptable choice.
It _is_ legal to download a firmware-extracted ROM file if you own the
actual hardware. We can tell how to obtain the file but warn it is their
responsability to do it only if they own the phisical hardware.
> Furthermore, you can't run PCSX w/o plugins, and while some of them
> (mostly those from P.E.Op.S.) are open-source, many others (including
> Pete's MesaGL/XGL2 video plugins) come w/o source, if not w/o any
> license whatsoever.
First all, coming with source is not enough. There are other requisites for
being DFSG-free (http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines)
What do the plugins do? Is the minimal set of plugins necessary to use PCSX
all free software?
For any of the non-free plugins, and specialy those who come without license,
we can try to convince the author of re-licensing them.
> And there's also the fact that upstream has now ceased development;
> others seem to have picked up the pieces, but PCSX is still
> "upstream-less" AFAIK.
Uhm.. what do you mean by others picking up the pieces?
> (If anyone's interested, I maintain my own homebrew packages for PCSX,
> plugins and such at <http://www.fbriere.net/debian/>. Feel free to
> install them if you're a user, or to adopt them if you're a DM.)
I could sponsor them if we sort out all the above problems first :>
Btw, please retitle this to ITP and set yourself as owner
(see http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/)
--
Robert Millan
"[..] but the delight and pride of Aule is in the deed of making, and in the
thing made, and neither in possession nor in his own mastery; wherefore he
gives and hoards not, and is free from care, passing ever on to some new work."
-- J.R.R.T., Ainulindale (Silmarillion)
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