GPL violation in Tomba! Special Edition ?

[ZazLechero]

Hello,

I saw in the License credits of the Nintendo Switch game « Tomba! Special Edition » that the game uses PCSX-Rearmed .

Is it a GPL violation ? I thought that GPL was incompatible with consoles because you can't publish the modified source code due to the consoles SDK NDA's ?
Also I thought that you couldn't mix GPL code with closed-source code, so how can that work when they built the game against the closed-sources consoles SDK?

Best regards,

[notaz]

I'm not a lawyer and don't know much about this, so just a guess.

If they just load the game into the emulator it's probably ok since there is no linking between them, but like you said they probably needed to link the emulator with console's SDK so that the official firmware can run it. According to the GPL anyone owning the game should be able to ask for the source and then would be able to investigate.

[ZazLechero]

There’s a precedent with this case:
https://blogs.scummvm.org/sev/2009/06/23/gpl-scummvm-and-violations/

In Tomba’s case, they didn’t hide the copyrights, but the other GPL violations still stands in my opinion. Only L-GPL can be compatible with consoles.

I think you should seek advice from http://gpl-violations.org/

[notaz]

Personally I don't think it's a good use of my time, sorry.

[ZazLechero]

I understand. Do you think you could consider re-licensing the project as L-GPL ? With this change, anyone who wants to respect licenses could have the same usage Limited Run Games currently has but without breaching.

[notaz]

That would require asking permission from everyone who worked on the code way back to the original PCSX release from 1999 or so. I know MAME managed to change it's license, but that was a huge effort.

[JesseTG]

I think sending a DMCA takedown request to Nintendo of America (and getting the game delisted from the eShop) is a possible solution if you feel strongly about it. A GPL violation is copyright infringement. You wouldn't have to take contributions into account, the presence of your own code is enough. (I'm not a lawyer, you should find one.)