Live data from Hacker News

ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.

zodttd.com

21–30 of 53 posts

Re: ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.

#21
post #18

I've talked with ZodTTD about this, but I've also done my own research into the licensing claims. What I've found is that most of his Cydia (and, presumably, Android) apps do rely on at least one GPL-licensed component. Note, however, that he can sell GPL'd apps, and the GPL specifically allows this: he just need to release the source code (edit: or give it to people when they ask). However, looking at his GitHub, hi…

Nothing in the GPL states that the source has to be posted online at the time you release a binary, what it states is that you must provide it to customers (people who have/use your binaries) at their request.

Re: ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.

#22
Go ahead and continue the negative talk about me in regards to licensing violation claims if you must. So be it. But as mentioned earlier, I posted this as to why Google responded the way they did. And it had nothing to do with open source violations.

To respond to some posts here. I generally don't charge for emulators. An example of profit sharing for ones I do, gpSPhone is done with an arrangement between the original author and I. It is licensed accordingly.

Though not an excuse these apps are largely an overblown hobby for me. I've come to learn how seriously people take this licensing. I always tended to do a lot of incremental updates, sometimes multiple ones to multiple products a day. Source control was a mess up until recently. Like I said, this was hobby-grade.

For those talking about a quick buck. If you think I'm getting rich off these emulators, you're sorely mistaken. I can easily focus AppStore and do better. Really all I wanted to do was take peoples requests for ports since the Tapwave Zodiac, GBA, and GP2X days, and give them something to play with.

I've heard enough bashing of my name over the past year, that I haven't touched much at all since then. There's a laundry list of updates I want to do, but there's so much involved now it's not worth the grief. I had way too many ports being worked on, and spread way too thin.

I'm sure someone else will come along, step up, and do a lot of great work for emulation and homebrew in general on mobile devices. Just remember they do this out of love, either for free or unsustainable pay, and deal with tons of support questions and requests daily. Don't burn them out on politics.

I will gladly respond to concerns, as I have before. Though none of this will be needed to be discussed soon enough.

Re: ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.

#23

The title on reddit was implied that ZodTTD was going to respond to the licensing claims. I see nothing here that serves as a response to the claims being levied against yongzh and ZodTTD.

You are correct. This was not about open source violations, as that was not the reason Google removed our apps and followed through with removing our accounts.

Re: ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.

#24
post #10

The issue here isn't ZodTTD, it's Google. Whatever licensing issues there are surrounding this, are we to believe the entire Android team wasn't closely watching sales of the questionably legal emulators that were selling like hotcakes on Market? Google wants to have their cake and eat it too. They'll only support devs as long as it will help them get their App Store (TM) off the ground. Good for business, probably.…

That's part of the discussion I intended for. This wasn't about licensing. And they could take down the apps in question. But why remove our entire accounts? The treatment involved by robo-emails and no human support was scary.

Re: ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.

#25
post #16
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I'm concerned, he's a thief. Oh really? If they violated licencing terms, drop a mail the EFF[1] guys and they'll help to sort it out. They already have helped in sorting out a bunch of cases, most often amicably. If ZodTTD conformed to the licensing terms, what's your point? It's the original developer that picks particular license -- wide is variety available already, covering most grounds. [1] http://w…

>If ZodTTD conformed to the licensing terms, what's your point? He apparently provides no evidence of this and is removing comments from his blog that question the claim... so i'm skeptical.

The author names were the reason for removing those posts, as I noted in my comment. Really that post has nothing to do with open source, and these matters can be handled by emailing me directly if it's such a concern, as I noted.

Re: ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.

#26
post #7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I'm concerned, he's a thief. Oh really? If they violated licencing terms, drop a mail the EFF[1] guys and they'll help to sort it out. They already have helped in sorting out a bunch of cases, most often amicably. If ZodTTD conformed to the licensing terms, what's your point? It's the original developer that picks particular license -- wide is variety available already, covering most grounds. [1] http://w…

EFF only does stuff if an actual copyright holder asks them to (and signs a legally binding thing as such), not random internet people.

I received a great contact at the EFF during their help towards fighting to maintain legality of "jailbreaking" of the iPhone.

Re: ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.

#27
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was GNU GPL.

Actually it doesn't matter what license it is. It isn't so much that the GNU GPL allows or disallows you to sell a commercial version without source but rather that the original copyright holder can release the software under as many different licenses as they want to, similar to the way that Nokia (née Trolltech) used to release Qt as GPL but also sell commercial licenses that allowed you to not be beholden to the G…

What truth am I to tell?

Re: ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.

#28
post #25
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If ZodTTD conformed to the licensing terms, what's your point? He apparently provides no evidence of this and is removing comments from his blog that question the claim... so i'm skeptical.

The author names were the reason for removing those posts, as I noted in my comment. Really that post has nothing to do with open source, and these matters can be handled by emailing me directly if it's such a concern, as I noted.

props for sticking up for yourself in a public forum (and i should stop bitching about some guy and some product i know next to nothing about)

but really i'm not seeing why you can't address the issue that every one seems to have it in for you on.

personally i'll grab the popcorn and stfu, if the copyright holders have issues with your distribution i'll let them handle it.

Re: ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.

#29
post #20
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple routinely waits a longer time than this guy before putting out the mobile webkit code from a given ios release.

And they don't release a buildable or complete copy of the source (more info: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2530689 ). But, ZodTTD's emulators aren't in the App Store since Apple won't allow them, so that's not really relevant here.

he was giving grounds to call non-sense the reason of "not timely updating source repositories because of GPL" given on the first post.

Re: ZodTTD, The Android emulator dev, responds to Google taking down his apps.

#30
post #22

Go ahead and continue the negative talk about me in regards to licensing violation claims if you must. So be it. But as mentioned earlier, I posted this as to why Google responded the way they did. And it had nothing to do with open source violations. To respond to some posts here. I generally don't charge for emulators. An example of profit sharing for ones I do, gpSPhone is done with an arrangement between the orig…

So, which was the explicit reason to take it down? Understand it's not license violation, i actually read TFA :)

I'm curious.

Post reply on HN