3 ms·
Why on earth would Nintendo ban open source software on the Wii?
by j_baker 16y ago
Why on earth would Nintendo ban open source software on the Wii?
- jwatzman 16y agoMy suspicion is that GPL'd software linked against the official Nintendo SDK could require release of parts of that SDK, which Nintendo wants to keep tight control over.
- rue 16y agoI don't think any sane reading of the GPL would imply that it "taints" a host platform (via its libraries), whereas the inverse, non-GPL code linking against GPL libraries, certainly can be argued. Maybe that's something that they don't want to go to court to prove though.
- gecko 16y agoI doubt they're banning open source per se (though that's certainly possible), but rather that the GPL ought to be incompatible with the Wii's licensing for exactly the same reason it's incompatible with Apple's App Store licensing. (Even if I'm wrong and they do ban open-source software explicitly, I still see the Wii and iPh?o(d|ne) situations as analogous from a GPL-compliance standpoint, which would still prevent ScummVM games from running on the Wii.)