It's unlikely that there will be any further releases of mt32-pi

> Return to Cathedral.

What does this mean?

'DOS" retro pseudo-hackers [crackers] always have been a cancer like this, sadly. Elitism, tons of gatekeeping that would even blush most *BSD users, code stealing, non-acreditation... basically the opposite of the public FOSS/Nix/Lisp world.

They were like that in the 90's, and tons of them never acknowleckged their mediocrity against, well, serious systems.

Amiga diehard fanboys and microcomputer owners were like that with tons of 'secretive' software, too.

In my country (Spain) tons of people tolk about the 'Golden Age' of the Spanish software, were 90% of it was pure crap against what the French and the Brits where producing even for the ZX, not to mention what the Japanese did with the MSX.

A community built on snobbism and spoiled kids. Then when the international scene (the serious one) compares their IF 'work' against The Hobbit or, worse, isometric games (not the ones made with an infamous engine, the ones with amazing artwork and free roaming), the whole deck of cards collapses.

It's an intentionally edgy statement, got it...

The major problem: With any idea around decreasing all that social media circus, and coming back to the actual things a bit more, you lose entire generations of human beings nowadays whose only reason to exist, whose only driver, whose only source of energy, is their smartphone with the right social media silo apps installed.

It's at least a decade too late to stop that apocalypse. It will not get better before a big boom suddenly forces them from outside. Our societies are obviously not strong and not resilient enough for more than a few decades of existance before it makes boom.

In my experience, their description sounds exactly like the greater emulation and retrogaming scene in general.

Sometimes responses like the OP's are the natural, healthy and expected reactions to reality.

It's insanely stressful and discouraging to be harassed, threatened, pseudo-stalked and have your work stolen for profit. Often the healthiest thing to do is to walk away from toxic situations and invest your time, attention and pursuits elsewhere.

That said, circumstances like these can certainly cause lasting depression. I just don't perceive the OP's behavior stemming from depression, it seems like a perfectly logical and healthy reaction in response to a shitty situation.

“ I have endured a sustained campaign of abuse from members of the VOGONS forum, been labelled a "clout-chaser", had threats sent to my personal email address, code been used in other projects without proper accreditation, my 3D print designs stolen and sold by faceless eBay/Etsy sellers, personal attacks made towards me when people don't get their feature request... the list goes on and on.”

I mean, perhaps they have depression, but this is pretty awful. It’d make me want to quit.

did you read the text linked?

Do you have any indication of why this person was the target of abuse?

It's vogons dot org; it's a pretty wide range of folks with varied interest in obsolete hardware. Some of the louder voices there are absolutely insufferable.

There is genuine knowledge in the forum pages though, and if you're doing stuff for DOS/real-mode x86 there's a good chance you'll find yourself there.

I think it stands for "Very Old Games On New Systems"

I'm just an observer, but from the outside, it seems like the emulation scene really, really likes to drive creators to drink or worse.

It takes a considerable amount of time, skill and engineering to create great emulators, and yet people still find reasons to complain or even harass developers of the projects they themselves are using.

It's just bizarre. I've seen some of it as a maintainer of some open source projects, but it's never escalated to harassment or what the OP describes. I really cannot relate to anyone that treats others like that.