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

[Liron Barzilay]

Thanks for the link. The instructions are a bit complicated and we were
looking how to do this in windows...

I understand we don't see things quite different - I hope things will
improve in the future.
Regarding the publicity, if you consider it bad publicity, please let us
know and we will remove any reference to ScummVM project (and leaving only
the minimum required by the GPL), although it will pain us greatly to do so.

All the best,
Liron.

-----Original Message-----
From: Max Horn [mailto:max at quendi.de] 
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2010 10:13 PM
To: Liron Barzilay
Cc: scummvm-devel at lists.sourceforge.net; 'Yinon Yamin'
Subject: Re: [Scummvm-devel] How to compile ScummVM for android - Wiki not
updated


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=