Open source projects do not grow by themselves. It requires serious effort from dedicated developers to develop and maintain applications as complicated as an emulator. Yuzu’s developers are banned from doing so and I don’t see how this incident could help bringing more developers.
I’m sure there will be developers capable enough to keep it working on new operating systems. Games that worked with it until now will keep on working, and that’s what matters to most people anyways. No need for major changes to the codebase.
I truly admire the optimism but I think it’s also important to understand the hard work and dedication that the Yuzu developers put in.
You’re correct that someone probably will fork it and development will continue but it is not simple and it requires a very specialized skill set.
I just think it’s important to never take for granted the people who take time out of their lives to give the community something so wonderful.
I don’t think it’s diminishing the work of the Yuzu devs, but more so a strong belief in the capabilities of the open source community. They worked their asses off and are extremely talented, and I’m sure there are others who will hop in and carry the torch.
I’m also curious if there’s a programmatic way to circumvent the argument Nintendo made about bypassing DMCA by separating the emulator from the code that utilizes the keys such that you can use tool A to bypass DMCA, and tool B (Yuzu with game decryption removed) to run the circumvented game. In this case tool A already exists, and tool B could be a fork of Yuzu.
to keep it working on new operating systems
That’s really easier said than done
What do you mean with they are banned? Who’s gonna stop them from contributing to one of the many Yuzu forks? What are they gonna do about it?
A permanent injunction is entered against Defendant enjoining it and its members, agents, servants, employees, independent contractors, successors, assigns, and all those acting in privity or under its control from:
a. Offering to the public, providing, marketing, advertising, promoting, selling, testing, hosting, cloning, distributing, or otherwise trafficking in Yuzu or any source code or features of Yuzu
IANAL but that sounds like the court is banning those developers from working on Yuzu. I mean, you can still try to work on project that is 90% Yuzu but with another name but I feel like your lawyer would advise against that.
Who’s gonna stop them from contributing to one of the many Yuzu forks? What are they gonna do about it?
The answers are “the court system” and “have the police arrest them for defying a court order” respectively.
What if I told you that throwing more developers at a problem != that problem getting solved faster?
