ParlorOpen source
Free software, all the way down.
Parlor is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3. Every emulation core it ships is an established open-source project, vendored at a pinned version and credited in the app under Settings → Acknowledgements.
Why GPL
The Nintendo DS core, melonDS, is GPL-3.0. Combining it means Parlor as a whole is distributed under the same license — which suits the project: you can read exactly how your saves are stored, how sync resolves conflicts, and how the audio clock is kept, and you can build it yourself.
Components
| Component | Used for | License |
|---|---|---|
| SameBoy | Game Boy / Game Boy Color core | Expat (MIT) |
| mGBA | Game Boy Advance core | MPL-2.0 |
| melonDS | Nintendo DS core | GPL-3.0 |
| GRDB.swift | Library database | MIT |
| ZIPFoundation | Zip import | MIT |
| 7-Zip C SDK | 7z import (decode-only subset) | Public domain |
| Swift Atomics | Lock-free primitives | Apache-2.0 |
| Libbet and the Magic Floor | Bundled homebrew demo | zlib |
What Parlor does not include
- No commercial games, and no links to places that distribute them. Parlor plays files you already own.
- No Nintendo DS BIOS or firmware. Those are copyrighted; you supply your own copies. See the Nintendo DS guide.
- No analytics SDKs and no third-party trackers. See the privacy policy.
Accuracy
The Game Boy core is verified in Parlor's own test suite against dmg-acid2, cgb-acid2, mooneye and Blargg's test ROMs; golden framebuffer hashes are re-recorded only on a deliberate core bump, so a regression in rendering fails the build.