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maintaining an open-source game emulator has really perverse incentives. users do not care whether your code is good or clean or properly tested. if a horrible hack gets a popular game running, they will plagiarise your WIP patch, make their own build of it, and distribute both…
…at which point it becomes very tempting to just move to a completely closed development model, where we only publish code that is complete enough to land on trunk. and already we are like half of the way there with touchHLE, but it's tempting to go all in. perverse incentives!
@hikari I really don’t get it, how do hacky forks with no contributors impact you? If it’s open source how is this plagiarism? Are they using your branding and name? You’re allowed to protect those independent of the source.
@penny there's fairly little i can do to protect the name, and these builds already create confusion, though i've taken some measures already to try to do something about it.
aside from a branding problem, what's frustrating is that this kind of thing can lead to people attributing your own work to someone else, and that isn't great from a motivational standpoint