wiiuse Forums

para · **Joined:** Sat Feb 03, 2007 12:11 am **Posts:** 196

Wiiuse version 0.12 has been released.

This release includes minor fixes. The most interesting part is the change in the licensing. See below for details.

ChangeLog:

Added:

API function wiiuse_set_ir_sensitivity()
Macro WIIUSE_GET_IR_SENSITIVITY()
Event type WIIUSE_READ_DATA
Event type WIIUSE_UNEXPECTED_DISCONNECT

Fixed:

[Linux] Ability to try to select() nothing
[Linux] Changed Makefile to include debug output when compiling in debug mode

Changed:

wiiuse_set_nunchuk_orient_threshold() now takes a wiimote_t pointer
wiiuse_set_nunchuk_accel_threshold() now takes a wiimote_t pointer
wiiuse_read_data() generates an event WIIUSE_READ_DATA rather than executing a callback

Download it from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=187194.
Documentation has been updated at https://wiiuse.net/docs/.

License Changes

So I've noticed there are some projects (even some talked about here) that appear to be breaking the license for wiiuse. Since up to this point the only option was the GNU GPLv3, that meant that anything you've written that uses wiiuse had to also be GNU GPLv3, thus being free and open source. I realize that this is not what many of you want, so I'm granting the option to use the GNU LGPLv3 license instead if you so choose. I encourage you to use the GPL if you can, because open source lets other people improve upon your work and continue to fix bugs if you or other maintainers should abandon the project for whatever reason, the software does not have to simply die out.

The new license option has a condition that it can only be used for non-commercial and non-proprietary programs. In a nutshell, the LGPL will allow you to use wiiuse in a closed source (non-commercial) program with the exception that any changes made to wiiuse itself must also be released (if any, like the GPL) if you release the modified object code.

I feel these licenses will give everyone much more flexibility while still keeping wiiuse free and open for everyone to enjoy.

Please let me know if you have any questions and I will be happy to answer them.

Until then, enjoy v0.12.

guiguito · **Joined:** Mon Feb 11, 2008 12:03 pm **Posts:** 28

some work for me :/ :D

lazy_bum · **Joined:** Fri Oct 26, 2007 10:38 am **Posts:** 2

What happend to the RSS feed?

Anyway, I've bumped Gentoo ebuild, but still gives me some sandbox violations. If anyone is interested new ebuild is here:
http://roslin.kicks-ass.net/download/ge ... il/wiiuse/
If you want complete overlay, you should check out here for install instructions:
http://my.opera.com/lazy_bum/blog/2007/ ... ant-roslin

::edit::
Should be fixed now.

PS. There was no RSS feed here, right? (-;

davorm · **Joined:** Fri Feb 22, 2008 10:24 pm **Posts:** 5

Para,

I'd ask you to consider making a change regarding licensing -- I believe it would be best for all if wiiuse were LGPL whether it's used in a commercial app or not. So only if you modify wiiuse itself you make available the modified wiiuse source, but never be forced to do that with the rest of your app.

Otherwise if people don't want to release their source for whatever reason, they'll find their way around it and it will create resentment. They may decide not to use wiiuse at all. They may simply ignore the licensing and think they'll deal with it later. Or they may rewrite wiiuse from scratch and then claim it's their own code. Or even, they can release their source but completely obfuscated: once I saw an "open source" program made so because of GPL, where all function and variable names were a mixture of 1's and lowercase L's, so all the released source looked like this:

int lllllllllllllllll1l1ll11l1ll11lllllllllllllll1l1l1l1l1l1l1l1ll1l1l( int llllllllllllllllll1l1l1lll11111111111l1llll1l1l1l1ll11l1, char * llll1ll1l1l1l1ll1llll1l1l1l1llllllllll1l1l1ll1l1l1l11l1l1l1l) {
int *l11l11l1l1lllllllllllllllllll1l1l1l1l1l1l1111111111111l1l1l11l1l1l1l1ll1l;
...

Whatever apporach they choose, either wiiuse won't be given proper credit or the given code will be useless.

And as for why people wouldn't want to release their source, I guess there are many reasons: some people may be afraid that their competition will take advantage of it. Or they can dream that they have made something really cool and want to be the only ones who can change it. Maybe it would conflict an existing license.

Or simply they don't want to show their source because they quickly slapped up something that works but wouldn't show it as such to anyone; to many programmers their source code is a very personal thing. I released source for my project -- unaware of wiiuse licensing, assumed it was FreeBSD like the other part of my project -- only after I cleaned it up. If your room is a total mess because you've been busy working you don't want to be forced to show it to just anyone.

But if people do create something good, it seems like over time they may make their stuff open source if there's a need for it. My favorite license is FreeBSD, but LGPL is fair: if you modify it, give it back to the community, otherwise do what you want with it.

Anyway, once again, I appreciate your great work, for me wiiuse is the best because it's the fastest, and all wiimote applications are real-time applications.

Davor

P.S. Here's the latest video of something really cool :-) I made with milkdrop and wiiuse:

para · **Joined:** Sat Feb 03, 2007 12:11 am **Posts:** 196

Quote:

But if you work with the original pristine source from id, you can always come back to us and say "well we developed all of this with the GPL source code, we want to ship a commercial product, but we don’t want to release our source code, so we'd like to buy a license", and we do that at reasonably modest fees, we’ve done that some with the previous generation, and that’s certainly an option for Quake 3.

I do hope that one of these days that somebody will go and do a budget title based on some of this code, and actually release the source code on the CD. That would be a novel first, and the way I look at it, people are twitchy about their source code, more so than I think is really justified. There's a lot of sense that "oh this is our custom super value that we’ve done our magic technology in here", and that’s really not the case.

A whole successful game, it's not about magic source code in there, it's about the thousands and thousands of little decisions that get made right through the process. It's all execution, and while there's value in the source code, it's easy to get wrapped up and overvalue what's actually there.

Especially in the case of the GPL'd stuff, I'm mean here we are, it's like I’m releasing this code that has this billion dollars of revenue built on it, don’t you think it's maybe a little bit self righteous that the code that you've added to it is now so much more special that you're going to keep it proprietary and all that.

-- John Carmack, QuakeCon 2005

davorm · **Joined:** Fri Feb 22, 2008 10:24 pm **Posts:** 5

Yeah but his philosophy didn't take: the list of GPL games based on Q3 source looks short and quite unremarkable -- compared to the list of proprietery games based on the same source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3# ... the_engine

So you can argue that the possibility of proprietery Q3 source licensing allowed people to create better stuff for everyone -- free or not -- than it would be the case if GPL was the only option.

(Plus it's easy for id software to be generous when they are #1 in their field and also rich.)

I think even when it's not about money, there's something in the psychology of developers that can block the flow of their creative juices if they know their source will have to be exposed for everyone's scrutiny.

para · **Joined:** Sat Feb 03, 2007 12:11 am **Posts:** 196

Your point is well taken and eventually I may move the library in that direction, but for now I'm happy with the current situation.

It's also worthy to note that this library is based on a major company's current commercial product. If other companies were to begin including wiimote support in products that may directly compete with Nintendo, I doubt they would sit idly by while a competitor takes money out of their pocket using their own technology. Although unlikely, something like that could potentially erupt into a legal fiasco I don't need to be a part of. When the Wii is no longer their flagship product I may consider changing the license, but that's many years down the road.

Quote:

int lllllllllllllllll1l1ll11l1ll11lllllllllllllll1l1l1l1l1l1l1l1ll1l1l( int llllllllllllllllll1l1l1lll11111111111l1llll1l1l1l1ll11l1, char * llll1ll1l1l1l1ll1llll1l1l1l1llllllllll1l1l1ll1l1l1l11l1l1l1l) {
int *l11l11l1l1lllllllllllllllllll1l1l1l1l1l1l1111111111111l1l1l11l1l1l1l1ll1l;

All I can say to that is ... wow. :roll:

That's really sad and pathetic. I guess you do have to give them a little credit for not violating the license, even though they did break it in spirit.

Reminds me of the IOCCC, but they have a little more unreadable code

davorm wrote:

Yeah but his philosophy didn't take: the list of GPL games based on Q3 source looks short and quite unremarkable -- compared to the list of proprietery games based on the same source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3# ... the_engine

Also his philosophy does take. There have been tons of work based off of Doom, Quake 1, Quake 2, and Quake 3. From updating the engines, to porting it, to making new works based on it, or even extracting certain parts to help in development for other projects. The contribution of id's source has made an immense impact on various fields in computing, not just gaming. Hell, I even see some academic projects that use his code from time to time. It's not really relevant here, but I just wanted to point that out.

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