CD-i Emulator is a long living project that has cost numerous hours of work (and fun, I hope) of coding. I have a lot of respect for that. The author of CD-i Emulator, cdifan, asks some money (25 euros) if you want an unlimited working version of the CD-i Emulator. A limited version is available for free, but it has a time limit of 3 minutes play. cdifan about this: "I have put a considerable amount of spare time into this project; version 0.5.3-beta2 of the CD-i Emulator program contains over 100,000 lines of C++ code that I wrote from scratch in my private time. I therefore consider it reasonable to ask for a small compensation. It will also motivate me to keep working on this project and answer any support questions you may have."
In addition, the newer 0.53 beta versions have built-in date limits and will not work after those limits; a "You have exceeded the evaluation time limit" message will be displayed immediately after starting emulation. All beta releases of CD-i Emulator 0.5.3 will function as an unlimited edition when you have activated an unlimited edition version 0.5.2 on your machine. Once you have paid, all betas until now are for free. cdifan mentioned before that this will do for minor updates; when a full DVC version of CD-i Emulator will be released; we will have to pay again. Well, we'll see.
We've recently shown you that with some tricks the beta 4 is still working. Other people look for a patched version. It exists for years via Google, although you won't find a link here. It should not come as a surprise that in the world of homebrew people tend to get everything for free. The only other working CD-i Emulator, the MESS CD-i Emulator, is also free. There are numerous online places that will help you with the original BIOS file.
I don't like these developments and it feels a bit out of time. The patched version by the way works flawless and without any hurdle, even in 2019. According to several forums it is used quite a lot. I expect when the new beta 5 will be released (either as 0.53 beta 5 or as CD-i Emulator 0.6 (that should be a lot more logic), it will be hacked/cracked within a month, just like the previous versions. How to change this?
I want to share some experience I see with friends who create something and want people to pay for it. They use platforms like Patreon, Liberapay or just a donation system. In this case, cracked versions are not needed and it might even have people find more credit for the work of cdifan. Moreover, it makes CD-i more easy to use, possibly even more popular when it is more accessable to the community. We can all donate to support the developments.
What would you prefer? How do you think about these developments?
