*edit* just noticed this post about this in the Retron 5 thread, but I think it's big enough to deserve a new topic.
You should not purchase the Retron 5.
From the libretro blog:
What makes this particularly insidious is that Hyperkin seems to have tried to obfuscate their illegal code use, meaning they knew they were doing something wrong and went ahead anyway. As it stands, they are selling a product which illegally locks down a platform that should by license be open and free for the users to modify as they see fit.
You should not purchase the Retron 5.
From the libretro blog:
Anyway, as it stands right now in its current state the product is using parts of our software illegally. There were also some other things found that were legally questionable like a Microsoft-licensed Verdana font which is covered by a End-User License Agreement, so there are multiple license violations here at play.
The problems with this are many-fold, but for us it comes down to mixing non-commercial cores on this device with more permissively licensed cores, the infringement of the emulator authors’ rights, the lack of credit paid where credit is due, the lack of freedom in the hardware device (which restricts the user in what he/she can do and makes him/her reliant on Hyperkin to serve as the gateway keeper since he/she can’t uncripple this version of Android on their device without voiding their warranty and they can’t run the uncrippled RetroArch frontend on it either), and the multiple conflicting licenses. Also, the fact that changes / patches to the sourcecode have not been provided to customers of this device. These should have been made available on a public place free of charge.
Open-source is not a matter of doing with it as you please. The license is there for a reason and it needs to be followed, and it dictates how you should go about your business when deciding to make a commercial product out of such software. GPL is known as a ‘viral license’ which means that the community behind this uses the viral nature of the GPL as an effective strategy to ensure more and more software gets licensed under the GPL, since every bit of GPL code that gets incorporated into another project needs to be made GPL or GPL-compatible as well otherwise it’s a violation of the license. As it stands right now, the software for the Retron5 is very likely illegal to distribute.
What makes this particularly insidious is that Hyperkin seems to have tried to obfuscate their illegal code use, meaning they knew they were doing something wrong and went ahead anyway. As it stands, they are selling a product which illegally locks down a platform that should by license be open and free for the users to modify as they see fit.