[GNU-linux-libre] emulators and other hosts of foreign applications

[bill-auger]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2023 22:54:31 -0400 Richard wrote:
> Is this kind of issue really limited to emulators?  There are other
> kinds of programs which are platforms to run other programs, and I
> think that they would all raise similar issues -- though perhaps there
> is an empirical tendency for emulators to be used for running nonfree
> programs.

in the broadest sense, it is somewhat ubiquitous - any application, which its
only purpose is as a host of other "foreign" applications would qualify - in
addition to the obvious emulators and game engines, hugely popular VM
"platforms" such as java, python, also audio plugin hosts, and let's not forget
web browsers, would also meet that description

for emulators (the questionable ones) it is not precisely a "tendency" to be
used primarily to run non-free programs - in most cases, that was the original
motivation for writing them - nintendo emulators for example, are probably the
most prolific and popular; but no one writes new games for them - they are
popular for the nostagia value of playing the old games

often though, the motivation was only for the author to practice the art of
emulator/compiler design - ie: the original author never intended to _use_ it
for anything

another aspect of those, is that often the emulator itself is not entirely
reverse-engineered, but will include the original manufacturer's operating
system ROM, or require that the user acquires one, in order to do anything with
it - most MAME emulators are of that sort - they do not distribute the ROMs for
copyright reasons; but the emulator is useless without them, other than
educationally (to study emulator/compiler design)