[Scummvm-devel] How to compile ScummVM for android - Wiki not updated

[Max Horn]

Am 19.07.2010 um 20:11 schrieb Liron Barzilay:

> Max,
> 
> There isn't any mention of Android in the README ' 9.0) Compiling: '
> section. 
> Can we get help with this ?

Maybe take a look at backends/platform/android/README.build ? 


> BTW- We never sold ScummVM on any store/market. We are selling adventure
> games that uses an improved version of ScummVM specifically for these games.

You are selling something that contains ScummVM as an essential ingredient, if you prefer that. Of course, as long as you comply to the GPL, you are allowed to do that! Doesn't mean we have to like it, nor that we have to like your behavior.

By the way, some people (most notably the FSF) argue that it is *impossible* to legally sell GPL v2 software via Apple's AppStore (google for it, you should be able to find the relevant texts). I am not sure whether anybody has tested this in court so far; but in any case, I personally am not interested in doing that; I am already content if you at least disclose your full source code modifications. Content, not happy, because a wad of source code is not going to merge itself back into ScummVM by magic; it'll require a lot of effort to dig through your code modifications, analyze them, then decide whether we can use the relevant change, and then potentially merge it back. Or not. Possibly after completely rewriting it to work properly.

> 
> 
> Sadly, you still don't see the difference and/or appreciate our
> contributions to the ScummVM project, like:
> 1. Donation.

It is true, iPhSoft donated $750. I deeply regret that we accepted this one-time donation nowadays. It gives iPhSoft the right to (correctly) point out that they donated some money, without meaning much to us. It's not as if that money would pay for any of the hard work many volunteers put every day into improving ScummVM.

By the way, small fun fact: According to https://www.ohloh.net/p/scummvm the project cost for ScummVM are about $15,000,000 :).


> 2. Publicity.

Yeah, right, after we prodded you again and again you added our project name to your AppStore page and website. That is, after we told you we'd not hesitate to get legal support. You then even started to try to comply to the GPL, kudos.

Googling for ScummVM gives me 419,000 hits, for iPhsoft 27,300. Not sure we need that publicity from you By the way, there is also bad publicity...



> 3. Improved code for these specific games (although not in your SVN).

Yeah, because you keep it to yourself, instead of cleaning it up and submitting it back to us. Of course your changes contain gems like

 	if (f->err()) {
+		printf("load filed\n");
 		error("load failed");
 	}

or, my personal favorite in the category "gross obscenity":

 uint16 AGOSEngine_Feeble::readUint16Wrapper(const void *src) {
+	if ((int)src<320) return (int)src;
 	return READ_LE_UINT16(src);
 }

The last one looks as if it was added to hack around (in a totally terrible way) a NULL dereference bug; of course, without a comment or any collaboration from you, it is impossible to know that, and hence impossible to "merge" this change (or rather, a change that fixes the actual underlying bug, instead of covering it up, as your change does).


Besides printf's, there are some changes that might be useful, if they were cleaned up and documented, but between the wad of weird unexplained tweaks and modifications its hard to find those. So, yes, in theory we might be able to benefit from your work, in reality, it is not that easy ... :/.



> 4. Making ScummVM users happy (we get a lot of 'thank you' emails from users
> that identify themselves as ScummVM users).

I am glad to hear that, and that you get those emails (we wouldn't know, of course, first time we hear of that). Then again, looking at e.g. the German FOTAQ on AppStore, it has an OK-rating of 3.5, though 23 out of 118 are 1-star ratings. Reading some of those reviews is quite sad -- seems you guys don't have the man power to do extensive testing and Q&A. Understandable, you are a small company, after all. But not good press for us, either. I am sure some of this is due to shortcomings of the iPhone port of ScummVM in general (e.g. its user interface definitely could need some improvement), and if we *saw* those reports, we might even know how to resolve some of those, but, well, we don't...

That's another reason why I am unhappy to see you selling an application, which *is* ScummVM bundled with a specific game, yet w/o any means for us to address bugs, complaints, etc.. Our name is attached to this, for good *and* for bad.


> 
> I can only hope not all ScummVM team think so badly about us...

We are a free project, and everybody here is welcome to speak for him-/herself. Though what I heard so far does not sound as if you should have high hopes...



> 
> P.S- If we will decide to bring these adventure games to the android (fotaq,
> simon1, simon2 and etc.), we will do our best to make it SVN-friendly.

We'll see and measure you by your actions, not your words.


Bye,
Max