Files
retroDE_ps2/third_party/LICENSING.md
T
thejayman77 ec82764bef Initial commit: retroDE_ps2 — first-of-its-kind PS2 GS FPGA core (DE25-Nano / Agilex 5)
RTL (GS rasterizer, EE core stub, platform bridge, LPDDR4B path), sim regression
(272 TBs), docs, and tooling. Copyrighted PS2 content (BIOS, game code, GS dumps,
and all dump-derived textures/traces) is excluded via .gitignore and stays local.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-06-29 20:10:50 -04:00

2.4 KiB

third_party Licensing and Provenance Policy

This file sets the policy for externally-derived material before any of it is vendored into the retroDE_ps2 repository. It is deliberately written early so that provenance discipline is in place from the start rather than retrofitted.

Principles

  1. No material is vendored into this repository without a recorded source, license, and adaptation note.
  2. Sony confidential documentation (see "Sensitive sources" below) is referenced and studied but is not distributed from this repository.
  3. Open-source material brought in must carry its original license and attribution, and that license must be compatible with the eventual retroDE_ps2 distribution terms.
  4. BIOS ROM images are never committed. Users supply their own dumps.

Sensitive sources (reference-only, not to be vendored)

The following documents are useful technical references but are Sony confidential-origin leaks. They inform our contracts but must not be copied into this repository:

  • GS User's Manual v6.0 (Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.)
  • VU User's Manual / Emotion Engine Vector Operation Unit Guide (Sony)

Treat these as reference-only. Cite them in contract docs when appropriate, but do not include excerpts beyond what is defensible under normal engineering-analysis fair-use practice.

BIOS and firmware

  • Real PS2 BIOS images are copyrighted by Sony and are not distributed here.
  • The repository may include checksums, region-identifying metadata, loading scaffolding, and test harnesses that expect a user-supplied dump to be placed in a known local location.
  • If an HLE BIOS stub strategy is adopted in any phase (see BIOS policy decision), the HLE code is original to this project and must be written from clean-room hardware references, not derived from commercial firmware.

Imported open-source material

If code from PCSX2, Play!, DobieStation, ps2dev/ps2sdk, gsKit, PSX_MiSTer, or other open-source projects is ever adapted into this repository, it must be placed under third_party/<project>/ with:

  • the original upstream URL,
  • the original license file,
  • the upstream commit or version identifier captured at import time,
  • a NOTES.md describing local modifications.

License compatibility must be confirmed before the import lands on main.

Status

No external material has been vendored as of 2026-04-16. This file defines the policy that applies when that changes.