Nintendo 3DS Emulator Lemonade Caught Stealing Code From Citra

Blender, Godot, Krita – when we consider free and open-source software, we often view them exclusively in a positive light, digital knights in shining armor performing noble deeds by providing their tools without cost. However, not all free solutions are as pure as they seem, as highlighted by former Citra developer PabloMK7, who recently took to Twitter to claim that Lemonade, an open-source Nintendo 3DS emulator, has stolen their code.

According to Pablo, Citra, also a 3DS emulator, which has been in development since 2013 and was discontinued by Yuzu back in March following their legal battle with Nintendo, was licensed with the GPL license, requiring everyone using the licensed code to keep it open source and credit the authors. However, Lemonade didn't fulfill this requirement, neglecting to credit the author of the code they were using, who happened to be Pablo.

Giving the benefit of the doubt, the author created an issue in Lemonade's GitHub repository regarding the GPL matter. Soon after that, more commits lacking proper credit appeared in Lemonade's repo, this time from another former Citra developer, gpucode, suggesting that the absence of proper crediting is unlikely to be an oversight, coincidence, or an honest mistake.

To add insult to injury, Lemonade's devs referred to Pablo as Escobar in their Discord server, a comparison the developer found to be "highly disrespectful":

Following the thread's publication, a couple of Twitter users also joined in, with @Vtamer_exe pointing out an interesting detail in Lemonade's "About" window:

And @Glazed_Belmont sharing a screenshot from what appears to be Lemonade's Discord, wherein Gamer64, the emulator's owner, mentioned that the project might be nearing its end:

You can find the original Twitter thread by clicking this link. Don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.