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this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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They'd face a mountain of opposition from the open source community at large.
Yuzu was licensed under the GPL. Even if Nintendo are the new owners of the Yuzu code, they cannot retroactively close-source the previously open code, per the license.
If they tried that and it looked like they could set a precedent, it could spell serious trouble for other GPL projects like the Linux kernel. And they've got some serious financial backing.
It's illegal for them to un GPL it, though. They could try, but they would fail. The only precedent it would set is to encourage people to not waste their time.
Exactly. And even if it did go to court, it wouldn't be hard to get EFF and the Linux Foundation to help Suyu.
Roe v Wade was overturned.
Legally speaking, nothing is impossible if one party is motivated enough, and other parties are too apathetic to do anything about it. And by other parties, I mean the public at large. The Linux and EFF communities are small by comparison.
The only way I know of to change a GPL license is to somehow contact everyone who has ever contributed to the project to agree to re-license their code, but there is no way I see Nintendo being able to pull that off... And, even if they did somehow manage to contact every one of these individuals, there's no way they'd get them to agree to that, no matter how much money they may have...
I mean, many thought the same of Yuzu.
In reality, Nintendo doesn't want to go to court. They didn't want to go to court vs Yuzu. They just wanted a settlement so they can 100% control the narrative. That's traditional Japanese corporation 101. Yuzu's case was never actually about piracy, copyright infringement, or anything else.
I would not be shocked to see Nintendo either attempt to un-GPL the code, claim some sort of copyright over forks, or even to maliciously inject new code in an attempt to gain access to user IP addresses and just send out letters to every Yuzu user. Nintendo really is that petty, look at what they did to Gary Bowser. They will 100% go after other emulators like this now that they know the developers will just give up in a week.
Problem is, Yuzu team were breaking other laws. They were tweaking their codebase based on leaks.
Do you know how much of society depends on GPL code? Every Android phone, every Chromebook, most servers and many billion dollar companies rely on GPL code. Nintendo attempting to un-GPL Yuzu will wake some sleeping giants, who will realise other people might attempt to do the same to the projects they rely upon. As a result the defence fund for anyone Nintendo goes after like this will end up VERY well funded. As in, make-Disney-shit-their-pants well-funded.
As for your point on Gary Bowser, you're kinda leaving out that Nintendo had a MUCH stronger case against him. Unlike emulators, the development of piracy modchips is very much illegal.
What are the names of these "sleeping giants" you mention, out of pure curiosity?
Linux Foundation - Linux is GPL and would be massively, negatively affected by an ability to suddenly un-GPL code
Google - their consumer OSes (Android and ChromeOS) use Linux as their base, not to mention their servers are almost entirely Linux.
IBM/Red Hat - RedHat is a billion dollar company specialising in providing Linux OSes.
Microsoft - surprising I know, but a lot of their internal and cloud stuff uses GPL code, including Linux.
Oracle - they ship a lot of GPL code, including a Linux distro.
EFF - The ability to un-GPL code would have catastrophic consequences on the internet, and this will be an issue they will weigh in on.
Apple - their servers don't run on macOS.
And just about any company you can think of with a Linux server.
I mention Linux a lot, but that is because it can't be understated how important it is in our global infrastructure. Linux is as much GPL as Yuzu, so if code can be retroactively un-GPL'ed from Yuzu, it can be done with one of the most important software projects in the world.