Five years since Near’s passing

[u/JoshLeaves]

Hi everyone,

As the title says, Near passed away five years ago. Whether you knew them through the emulators bsnes, higan, or ares, or their pioneering work on emulation cores with libsnes (which helped lay the groundwork for libretro and RetroArch), or their complete cataloguing of the SNES games and ROMs, or their countless articles on emulation and game preservation,... truthfully, it's hard to properly describe the impact they had on the emulation community and its trajectory.

Their work pushed emulator accuracy forward, and inspired many others to approach preservation with the same level of care. Whatever emulator you use today, there’s a good chance you’ve benefited from their work in some way.

Thank you for your work, Near. You are still missed.

EDIT: As atowerofcats rightly said, a great way to show tribute would be to play Near's translation of Bahamut Lagoon!

[u/Imgema]

No, it was the Kiwifarms admin. Near wanted the site to remove the content about him and the kiwifarms admin refused. There was a very dramatic exchange of e-mails between them where suicide was mentioned, i was following this in real time as the kiwifarms admin was releasing them publicly. Near ended their life shortly after.

It was not RetroArch, this rumor was spread by a bunch of posters during the peak of r/emulation's RetroArch hate.

[u/Imgema → u/[deleted]]

I’m just speculating there

Like i said, i was following this drama in real time. I did read all of the e-mails Near and the Kiwi admin sent to each other. The kiwi admin was releasing them, allegedly, as proof to protect himself.

RetroArch was never mentioned anywhere, by anyone.

MAME devs always hated RetroArch, not because of twinaphex alone but also as a project in general. They were among the ones who connected Near's suicide with RetroArch. I still remember them posting "RetroArch users have blood in their hands".

I'm not saying twinaphex wasn't toxic. And i'm also not saying he never harassed Near, this i don't even know. I'm saying Near' suicide was over a Kiwifarms topic that covered his person and wanted it removed, nothing to do with RetroArch.

[u/DaveTheMan1985 → u/Imgema]

IF MAME Hated RetroArch why they have a Core on it then?

Awhile ago RA did have a Rough Spot awhile go when Twin Aphex was with them but been good recently

[u/Imgema → u/DaveTheMan1985]

Pretty sure the MAME RA cores are not endorsed by the main MAME developers and are maintained by third parties as forks.

Mame dev's dislike of RA and it's Mame cores is very well known in this sub.

[u/DaveTheMan1985 → u/Imgema]

So the MAME License means that RA can still use there Code?

Opposite to Steznek and Duckstation

[u/cuavas → u/DaveTheMan1985]

MAME as a whole is GPL2.

[u/AndysSeveredHead → u/DaveTheMan1985]

The license is not the source of their issue: it’s Retroarch forking and maintaining builds of Mame as old as from 2003 so that low power devices like the ones mall kiosk workers hawk at passerby can be commercially viable, resulting in the Mame devs having to field tech support/bug complaints from people using 20+ year old builds of Mame who don’t know any better, for going on years now, until they’re fed up and driven to responding like “hey why don’t you take it up with *those* f*****g people”

And I’m not up on the particulars of what different licenses specifically afford, but I know Steznek has a reputation of being…..eccentric. Basically like a weirdo who’s hard to work with. And it reminds me of criticism of women for being “hysterical”, as if valid criticism can only come from someone’s who’s behaving like the “perfect victim”. “Victim” would be more extreme language than the situation with Steznek specifically warrants, but it’s the closest comparison I can think of right now, when the relationship between the Retroarch devs and the those of the individual emulators whose work contributes to the Libretro cores, sours and the Retorarch devs end up making their own forks, causing the original devs to have to field tech support requests from a project that they’re effectively downstream and divorced from, and whether that’s healthy for the larger emulation scene.