Selling Projects

Zigurana

This makes me sad-mad.
Hey, at least he was being frank about it.

mediamogul

An honest thief. Now all I need to do is find a hooker with a heart of gold on here and I'll win forum bingo.

BuZz

Unfortunately there are many others like this user - just got another mail from someone who initially wrote to us telling us they were going to sell retropie.

Now they have written a long email telling us why it's ok and why it's ok to sell it with roms.

Seems like these idiots are quite pleased with themselves. I tell myself they are in the minority, but they seem quite vocal. It does endanger our project as @herb_fargus has pointed out.

I hope it's all worth it to them. I'm sure it is - they just want to make a few quid. Who cares about the future of RetroPie when you can make some money eh ?

markyh444

Makes me sad all these pricks, especially as they blatantly splash RetroPie all over their listings so people come here asking for help. Then they generally get told that they've bought something illegal and struggle to get the help they want, through no real fault of their own. After forking out for something, they're then told to wipe the SD card and start again so we can assist. Kind of elliminates the idea of buying a pre-built SD ready to go. I also doubt any of the sharks selling it will support any of it, they'll just send them here coz it's not their software.

Sad face.

enderandrew

FWIW, I don't personally plan on selling a RetroPie project personally, but I know there are people who want to buy a pre-built working solution rather than try to build something themselves. There are gamers who aren't necessarily tinkerers. And there are people who have limited internet or bandwidth who don't want to download the software.

RetroPie itself isn't illegal software.

If someone wants to sell hardware that includes the software, the limitation should be that they:

1 - Don't include illegal ROMs
2 - Keep the GPL license included in the image
3 - Include a link to the website so users can get support here if they need it

There are legal ROMs and open source games that can be included in a legal image.

BuZz

@enderandrew many of the emulators have non commercial clauses in the licence. The software is always used as the selling point on eBay etc.

Lyle_JP

@mediamogul Even when you find one of those, it doesn't seem to affect price one bit! :(

markyh444

Selling the bundle and including a link to the project to download the image is fine on the face of it, but it's thin.

BuZz

If the sellers really were selling the hardware, and just provided info as to what software can be run on it (eg including info about Lakka, Recalbox, RetroPie, Libreelec etc) that would be fine - but the reality is most of the sellers are selling with the image as the main selling point, preloaded with roms, and Kodi with all the addons etc.

mediamogul

BuZz said in Selling Projects:

most of the sellers are selling with the image as the main selling point

RetroPie! Kodi! Fully loaded! Each order is also guaranteed to contain a 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card if you order right now!

Edit: The "Fully Loaded" thing gets me every time. One of my friends was saying that he bought a Kodi device on eBay. I made mention that any of the machines require a bit of upkeep to remain fully operational over time and he quickly responded with, "No, I bought mine fully loaded". Funny stuff.