Can an image probably get bounded on one Pi?

sirhenrythe5th

Hi Folks,

Maybe a noobish or even foolish idea....
I really hate this scammers and and all that people that use prebuilt Images.
I dont see those very often here in europe for good sake, but in the states laziness and convinience seems to be the most liked way.

So, what i thought: is it maybe possible to bind your created image to a Pi?
Same way as operating systems or bought applications on a PC?
Is there something specific like a MAC Adress or something else that could be used for this on a Pi?

Of course it would also make "our" life a bit complicated, as i am using two Pis myself, on on HDMI and one on a CRT.

But i would accept this method with a smile ony face and just hold everything important at hand to build a new image within short time.

So, what do you think?
I would love to see that those scammers and prebuilt users would get harder times!

mitu

Unfortunately it would be an exercise in frustration, both for the users and developers. Adding DRM/activation like features is a cat and mouse battle that's producing more damages than benefits IMHO. Witness how the games' DRM protection gets cracked and bypassed in no time (granted, there's a bigger 'market' at stake) to understand how futile it is.

RetroPie is open source, so as - most of the - emulators included and the Linux system it's based on. As such, there's nothing preventing other developers (or scammers) to create something thoroughly similar and remove any sort of protection from it.

While it would be nice to have scammers get turned down, I'm afraid technically it's not worth it - by a long shot.

sirhenrythe5th

@mitu of course you are right concerning the Cat and Mouse Game!
Thats why i called it "harder" and not impossible.
I believe that a at least most of the scammers are only able to fill the base-image with content and sell them.
Most of them will no be able to crack or create Code.
So it might be a hurdle for these guys, as well for users of prebuilts.

But of course you are right with the spirit of open source too!
It is like you mentioned: does not seem to be worth the work.

Kind regards Mitu!

cyperghost

@mitu @sirhenrythe5th
A sensible way seems to me to appeal to common sense. Everywhere the message to indicate that RetroPie is a free project and can be obtained free of charge under https://retropie.org.uk/ and it should not be sold under any circumstances. You should always display the message if you go into the RetroPie setup and even a small message in the .bashrc would not be wrong.
Maybe this drives more people to donate a little money here. I wonder anyway how the ratio of server costs to donation quota is.

I think encrypting the software is the wrong way. "Violence creates counterviolence" and as long as there is motivation to make money out of a project, violence is always used to achieve the goal.

sirhenrythe5th

@cyperghost you are absolutely right!
My Intention was not to encrypt the whole thing, the Software would be as free to use as it is today, so that everyone can download it and use it as he want to.
The only difference would be that you cant just copy it by duplicating your image.
If you put it in another Pi it says "No my friend"

But i unterstand that this is not the idea of Retropie and also too much work for a little effect.

bandass

I was wondering when someone was going to ask that. It’s unfortunately lacks a source, it’s more anecdotal from our own experience annotating images

edmaul69

@sirhenrythe5th your last post would never be acceptable. Who wants to spend a ton of hours creating and then backing up their image only to have their pi die or want to upgrade their pi and to now have an unusable image/sd card and having to start over from scratch? I’m probably in the majority to say that would be a 100% unacceptable method of drm’ing. Drm also would never be acceptable in an environment based around roms.

sirhenrythe5th

@edmaul69 my idea concerned the scammers and users of prebuilts. Not us!
I guess everyone here is able to do the following steps instead of writing Images:
Install a fresh official image.
Setup country and keyboard Layout in rasp-config.
And then finally copy all the rom-, gamelist-, downloaded_Images folders and other optimized files and of course the boot/configs.txt.
Connect your Pads and you are ready to go.

I could live with this solution, but of course it may be more annoying for other users here.
Sorry, i did not want to upset you Edmaul!!

edmaul69

@sirhenrythe5th oh you didnt upset me at all. I was just voicing my opinion.