Sad to see, but I don’t blame him at all.
Maybe you should; the cross posted thread provides context that changed my mind
What am I missing. Cross poster thread has people mostly calling the arch users weenies.
This one explains it for me:
Still, I am totally on the dev’s side.
He specifically switched the license because people kept sending angry support requests for badly done distro repackages that didn’t work properly.
Too many entitled users think that “customer is king” also applies when they didn’t pay a cent for the software they use.
It’s a common problem that FOSS developers get burnt out with idiots demanding support thinking that the developer somehow owes them something, when in reality he’s giving away hundreds or thousands of hours of work for free.
He specifically switched the license because people kept sending angry support requests for badly done distro repackages that didn’t work properly.
Arch Linux’s version literally builds his latest released code. https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=duckstation-git looks relatively straightforward. It checks out Stenzek’s latest code and then does a for-loop for Stenzek’s super weird build-dependencies-linux.sh script (I would have just used a .spec file in Open Build Service but my packing background is RPM and not whatever use case that is).
I understand the dev, but it still seems like they created this problem. Seems like they could have just left the license as it was and say “only these OS’s are supported at this time, feel free to port or fork but I’m not responsible for anything beyond this”
…or not set up a support Discord and then get mad when people ask for support…
deleted by creator
Checking some other threads, seems this dev can show themselves out and everything will be chill.
Arch users are typically pretty assholish and very outspoken. They love telling people that need help to RTFM which makes the Linux community harder to be a part of.
The problem don’t seem to be the users, but the dev.m, according to additional context I read.
The dev started out with an open source license, but after seeing other people use the license as intended, he got pissed and closed down the license.
So since now, like on arch, people have to build the old, open source versions, people are now reporting old bugs, which pissed the dev off even more.
So tl;dr: entitled dev wants full control over his open source project, closed down the license and is pissed people are still using the old open source version.
So now someone giving away hundreds of hours of work for free is entitled because he doesn’t want to provide it with the license YOU, who likely contributed nothing at all to the project, prefer.
Wow.
You did not read what you wrote before calling someone else entitled, did you?
Wow, seems you didn’t read what I posted at all.
Yes, taking away hundreds of hours of work by people contributing to your OPEN SOURCE project is what I call entitlement.
Telling people trying to help to fuck off is pretty shitty, but apparently not in your eyes.
The problem here seems to be that the developer changed the license resulting in an older version being the only way to distribute duckstation. https://reddthat.com/comment/20510069
They pride themselves that they’ve managed to install an OS with the help of a step by step guide. So much so, they need to use every opportunity to tell people they use Arch, btw.
Well, thier choice (apparently flatpaks are bad as well). it’s not like there is no other PS1 emulator, and without this person and their shareware project all will be lost.
DuckStation is in flatpak form, on flathub, right now, official version.
https://flathub.org/apps/org.duckstation.DuckStation
I mean, I too would get very, very annoyed by a tiny minority of overall users complaining about not being able to deploy/use my software in a way that … there is a functional alternative to… and I am not an expert in their particular preffered use case.
The way I am reading this is that he has removed PKGBUILD, and that entirely dropping linux overall is basically a threat, not necessarily a promise.
Obviously that is my subjective interpretation, but it is my interpretation, thus I find the post title … maybe not the most accurate.
Obviously nuking all linux support would be doing massive excess splash damage to unintended targets, and I do think he’s acting a bit rashly, but at the same time, I completely empathize and sympathize with being constantly bothered by people with very specific demands… again, in a case where there is a viable alternative.
But, I also think a potentially better solution to all this would seem to be for him to just allow a fork or downstream version of DuckStation, just publically say “I’m not supporting PKGBUILD/Arch, if Arch people wanna figure it out, go nuts.”
DuckStation is in flatpak form, on flathub, right now, official version.
As of 2025/07/26, with the aforementioned issues and a lack of interest from users, the Flatpak package is deprecated.
I use duck station on Android. It’s freaking great. Does it even need updates? Dev doesn’t owe anyone anything and drop Linux support if they want to. It’s probably more a threat than anything else. Worse case scenario Linux support goes away and a competitor comes along eventually. Sounds great.
Nah, if the dev actually stops developing for Linux someone will fork the project, although to be honest the big majority of Yuzu forks just are a rename without any real changes to the code.
People have said in other threads that it has already been forked into “Swanstation” prior to this, because Duckstation is apparently not open-source anymore.
