No new firmware for over a month, trouble in Hyperkind land?

[the_importer]

Do you think these potential legal issues with emulators could be the downfall of the Retron 5 and that raising the price of the units is for some sort of lawyer fee piggy bank?

[hikaricore]

They did sorta fumble rush one final non-beta after the news hit, I suspect they're busy as hell with the current situation.

[the_importer]

They did sorta fumble rush one final non-beta after the news hit, I suspect they're busy as hell with the current situation.

If they decide to drop the product because of this. consumers will probably loose whatever trust they had left, so either way, they're in shit.

[hikaricore]

Well, here's the terrible truth. Even if they stay out of compliance with GPL or whichever license individual software is released under the only thing that can stop them from continuing to release updates or sell the system is a lawsuit. One thread I saw on the topic with an emulator which I can't recall the name of indicated that the specific license prohibited the use of the software to make a profit. IE it may be impossible for the author(s) to seek legal recourse without invalidating their own license. I haven't checked said thread in a few weeks so I can't confirm the validity of what I read, but I'd imagine the situation where money being required to take action is fairly universal due to the nature of open source software, not to mention possibly needing all contributors to agree on said action. I'm not saying they would just continue under the guise of compliance when it may or may not be fully realized, however if so inclined such things may be possible. Hyperkin still denies the use of RetroArch in their product, but the developers of libretro insist it's there. For all we know Hyperkin could be rewriting an interface from scratch to put this topic to rest. Big jobs like that take time, and radio silence could be expected in such endeavors. Anyway I'm speculating a bit too much for my comfort as I would like to avoid foot-mouth incidents on the forum. It's anyone's guess what's going on. With luck one of the Hyperkin crew will chime in here as they have in the past to enlighten us.

I doubt they would ever drop the console without a fight. It's been pretty damn successful and the demand is still fairly high.

[the_importer]

Well, here's the terrible truth. Even if they stay out of compliance with GPL or whichever license individual software is released under the only thing that can stop them from continuing to release updates or sell the system is a lawsuit. One thread I saw on the topic with an emulator which I can't recall the name of indicated that the specific license prohibited the use of the software to make a profit. IE it may be impossible for the author(s) to seek legal recourse without invalidating their own license. I haven't checked said thread in a few weeks so I can't confirm the validity of what I read, but I'd imagine the situation where money being required to take action is fairly universal due to the nature of open source software, not to mention possibly needing all contributors to agree on said action. I'm not saying they would just continue under the guise of compliance when it may or may not be fully realized, however if so inclined such things may be possible. Hyperkin still denies the use of RetroArch in their product, but the developers of libretro insist it's there. For all we know Hyperkin could be rewriting an interface from scratch to put this topic to rest. Big jobs like that take time, and radio silence could be expected in such endeavors. Anyway I'm speculating a bit too much for my comfort as I would like to avoid foot-mouth incidents on the forum. It's anyone's guess what's going on. With luck one of the Hyperkin crew will chime in here as they have in the past to enlighten us.

I doubt they would ever drop the console without a fight. It's been pretty damn successful and the demand is still fairly high.

This is a big gray area when you consider how the little differences could have made things different. Let's say that Hyperkind would have the Retron 5 as an empty shell in the sense that it was hardware only and Android OS, no emulators. You would then need to go to their website to download everything on your SD card and install it in the console. This would technically be the equivalent of buying an Ouya and downloading legally modified open source emulators.

I'm certain that Hyperkind only gave out the source code because they got caught, but I don't think the reason why they hid it in the first place was because of legal issues, I think it was more for the fact that they were probably embarrassed that they needed to resort to this in order to sale their product since they're a hardware company, not a software one.

[Retron Tèch]

Hyperkin still denies the use of RetroArch in their product, but the developers of libretro insist it's there. For all we know Hyperkin could be rewriting an interface from scratch to put this topic to rest.

As far as I'm aware, with the release of the last public firmware where we removed the small snippets of unused RetroArch code unfortunately left in from old test code, there have been no further accusations from RetroArch that we are still incorporating their "frontend" code. If I am misinformed in this instance, I would appreciate if someone could correct me.

Regardless, the fact is that our front end is and has always been an original work which does not make use of any other code that would require us to be bound by GPL or other such licenses. As for the emulator cores, we are committed to abiding by the relevant licenses and will continue to do so.

Any potential issues arising from the use of the emulator cores have absolutely nothing to do with any perceived lack of updates. In fact I intend to be making some new BETA releases within the next week or two.

[hikaricore]

Hyperkin still denies the use of RetroArch in their product, but the developers of libretro insist it's there. For all we know Hyperkin could be rewriting an interface from scratch to put this topic to rest.

As far as I'm aware, with the release of the last public firmware where we removed the small snippets of unused RetroArch code unfortunately left in from old test code, there have been no further accusations from RetroArch that we are still incorporating their "frontend" code. If I am misinformed in this instance, I would appreciate if someone could correct me.

Regardless, the fact is that our front end is and has always been an original work which does not make use of any other code that would require us to be bound by GPL or other such licenses. As for the emulator cores, we are committed to abiding by the relevant licenses and will continue to do so.

Any potential issues arising from the use of the emulator cores have absolutely nothing to do with any perceived lack of updates. In fact I intend to be making some new BETA releases within the next week or two.

Fair enough! I can't wait to see what new and exciting features/fixes come our way.

[Kulp]

In fact I intend to be making some new BETA releases within the next week or two.

this was over a month ago, I do hope some new beta is coming soon, my stack of non-functioning games is getting bigger
still waiting to play my NES Power Pad games on RetroN 5 as well

[dashv]

In fact I intend to be making some new BETA releases within the next week or two.

this was over a month ago, I do hope some new beta is coming soon, my stack of non-functioning games is getting bigger
still waiting to play my NES Power Pad games on RetroN 5 as well

If you haven't already please share the stack of non-functioning games. They can only fix something if they know it's broken.

[Kulp]

In fact I intend to be making some new BETA releases within the next week or two.

this was over a month ago, I do hope some new beta is coming soon, my stack of non-functioning games is getting bigger
still waiting to play my NES Power Pad games on RetroN 5 as well

If you haven't already please share the stack of non-functioning games. They can only fix something if they know it's broken.

oh, I've already told Retron Tech.
he's got a big list