I’m in the process of putting together a “works-out-of-the-box” emulation package for those who aren’t as tech savvy as I but who would enjoy a convenient, easy to use setup for playing old games on the PC. Before anyone raises a red flag, I will NOT be including roms or bios or anything of that nature. I would like to use Retroarch in this and from what I’ve read so far, that’s ok. But can I distribute cores with this package? Or do I have to make the end user download them on their own?
Sounds good. We would prefer if you don’t ask for any money in exchange, as well, but you’re not legally obligated to that (unless you also distribute non-commercial cores, like snes9x, MAME and Genesis Plus GX).
Distributing cores with the executable is fine (we did it for a long time), though some GPL-maximalists may complain at some point that you’re distributing the aforementioned “non-free” cores alongside GPL cores and GPL RetroArch. If that happens, you may have to separate the non-GPL cores into a separate pack. That sort of silliness is one of the reasons we put in the core downloader inside RetroArch.
Thanks for the info, that’s awesome. And this is a completely free project 