How extremely weird. Why didn't they just use RTEMS openly? Was it for clout or did they want to circumvent the GPLv2? I can't imagine the Wii Homebrew scene being commercially significant that it would matter.
Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS
11–20 of 169 posts
Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS
#12RTEMS looks pretty replaceable with freeRTOS....
Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS
#13Is RTEMS an active project? They should file a copyright complaint and have the libogc repo taken down if this is true. If it were me, I'd lawyer up and throw the book at them. LibOGC accepts donations via Patreon, which means -- if the allegations are true -- they're profiting off stolen code. RTEMS could and should sue for damages. This isn't the first time I've seen an open source project stolen by someone trying…
Being active doesn't matter, the copyright holders still hold the copyright. How much they profit off the stolen portion is also questionable, and open source licenses weren't meant to extort money but to grant us rights to the code. What they should do is add attributions and fix their licensing (libogc needs to be GPLv2), or remove the code. Willingly, yesterday.
I was thinking more "is it possible to contact them." When I googled RTEMS I found that it's originally an OS for missile systems from 1993 O_o
But I disagree. It's not extorting money to sue someone who stole your code and deliberately removed your copyright notices. The open source license only gives you the right to use the work for commercial purposes AS LONG AS you comply with the terms of the license. If you don't, then you're illegally profiting off stolen work. You can't violate the terms of a contract while still benefiting from it.
I don't know how much was stolen here, but if it's foundational enough to the project that HBC had to give up development, then they might have a case, but IANAL. Not doing anything though would mean letting them get away with their ill-gotten gains (again - if true), and I just don't think that's right. Like I said, I've seen similar things happen before and it pisses me off.
Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS
#14How much "reverse engineering" these days really is clean room and how much of it is just ripping off proprietary software? One can easily find a bazillion of "github repos" that distribute what is evidently directly decompiled game code with minimal cleanup. Bonus points if they also claim it is OK as long as the game art is not distributed, which in addition to being wrong is disrespectful to developers as a whole.…
Note that reverse engineering does not have to be clean room, poking at hardware without ever seeing any software. In many places, poking at the proprietary software, decompiling it, tracing it, and so forth is fine despite what unenforcable EULA's might suggest. What is not okay is taking the binaries or decompiled source verbatim and re-distributing it.
Note that e.g. copyright does not apply to decompiled source code (the original authors did not write the decompiled source, unlikely assets taken verbatim - maybe that's where the arguments you mention stem from - although note that there may be regional regulatory differences). Instead, the things that might cause issues are things like the enforceable parts of the software license, any enforceable patents on the functionality, or enforceable platform license restrictions for applications built based on decompiled source.
Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS
#15To me this looks like a bad attempt at exposing dirty laundry in bad faith, which is not too surprising coming from him.
1. Commit 3ba50ec which Marcan is complaining about was pushed in 2008 and didn't just delete attrib specifically, but all (?) VCS comments indiscriminately. The file was barely touched since
2. "The authors of libogc didn't just steal proprietary Nintendo code (...) ignorance about the copyright implications of reverse engineering Nintendo binaries" ---> AFAIK it's software RE work, and nothing done in the console hacking scenes is truly cleanroom at all, and there's no point to it either as Nintendo can knock&talk and/or send strongly worded letters when they please, legality be damned
I don't know much about the Wii scene specifically, and libogc seems to be a mess in general, but what I do know is that libctru (3ds)/libnx (Switch) don't have that drama nor made the mistakes made in libogc
Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being active doesn't matter, the copyright holders still hold the copyright. How much they profit off the stolen portion is also questionable, and open source licenses weren't meant to extort money but to grant us rights to the code. What they should do is add attributions and fix their licensing (libogc needs to be GPLv2), or remove the code. Willingly, yesterday.
The copyright holders might have allowed this use, or at least declined to pursue any enforcement.
Note that copyright holders for an open source project is often a very long list of people that would all need to approve of having their contribution relicensed. It's a bit of a complicated matter.
Considering attribution was removed, I doubt it was approved, but it's not impossible that they somehow learnt and decided not to care as enforcement can be unreasonably cumbersome.
Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS
#17How much "reverse engineering" these days really is clean room and how much of it is just ripping off proprietary software? One can easily find a bazillion of "github repos" that distribute what is evidently directly decompiled game code with minimal cleanup. Bonus points if they also claim it is OK as long as the game art is not distributed, which in addition to being wrong is disrespectful to developers as a whole.…
> How much "reverse engineering" these days really is clean room and how much of it is just ripping off proprietary software?
In Nintendo console hacking scenes? None at all, there is no point to it, going through the hassle of doing cleanroom as an individual is wasted effort.
Though, the spectrum between copy-pasting HexRays output verbatim and rewriting things yourself is fairly large.
Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS
#18How extremely weird. Why didn't they just use RTEMS openly? Was it for clout or did they want to circumvent the GPLv2? I can't imagine the Wii Homebrew scene being commercially significant that it would matter.
Note the mention that libogc also copies code from the official Nintendo SDK, which is proprietary.
I would guess one of three cases:
- They didn't want to respect the GPL, because they thought their library would be less popular if it were GPLed. (Many homebrew projects don't want to be fully Open Source because they want to hold back some special sauce, either to slow down efforts by the console vendor to stop them, or to differentiate themselves from other homebrew projects for clout. So someone building a foundational library for homebrew on a platform might want to, legitimately or otherwise, avoid presenting themselves as GPLed.)
- They didn't want to respect the GPL because they couldn't, because they were also pulling in proprietary code they weren't supposed to be using anyway.
- They didn't care because they were already ripping off the Nintendo SDK so why not rip off an Open Source project too. For instance, they just pointedly didn't care about copyright at all, which is a very different position than just not caring about code being proprietary.
(I can respect the position of "we're ignoring the copyright on this old game, so that we can do some awesome modding/romhacking", which is very different than ignoring Open Source licenses and failing to even give credit. I don't see the former as hypocrisy; it's just "we should be able to hack on anything". Console game modders / romhackers / etc tend to have a huge amount of respect for the original game and its authors, and give due credit, even if they're technically violating copyright.)
Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS
#19To me this looks like a bad attempt at exposing dirty laundry in bad faith, which is not too surprising coming from him. 1. Commit 3ba50ec which Marcan is complaining about was pushed in 2008 and didn't just delete attrib specifically, but all (?) VCS comments indiscriminately. The file was barely touched since 2. "The authors of libogc didn't just steal proprietary Nintendo code (...) ignorance about the copyright i…
> To me this looks like a bad attempt at exposing dirty laundry in bad faith, which is not too surprising coming from him.
It seems odd that you would complain about the messenger, here, since it seems you don't actually dispute the message.
> Commit 3ba50ec which Marcan is complaining about was pushed in 2008 and didn't just delete attrib specifically, but all (?) VCS comments indiscriminately.
So it's OK that they did something wrong because they did everything wrong?
> there's no point to it either as Nintendo can knock&talk and/or send strongly worded letters when they please, legality be damned
There's very much a point to it (when you're building an emulator or tooling, rather than e.g. romhacks where it's unavoidable), because if you carefully stay entirely above board, you can burn those strongly worded letters, make DMCA counter-notices, and otherwise rely on the fact that both emulation and reverse-engineering are legal.
Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS
#20To me this looks like a bad attempt at exposing dirty laundry in bad faith, which is not too surprising coming from him. 1. Commit 3ba50ec which Marcan is complaining about was pushed in 2008 and didn't just delete attrib specifically, but all (?) VCS comments indiscriminately. The file was barely touched since 2. "The authors of libogc didn't just steal proprietary Nintendo code (...) ignorance about the copyright i…
> AFAIK it's software RE work, and nothing done in the console hacking scenes is truly cleanroom at all
There's a wide gradient of how much effort people put into reverse engineering consoles in a legal way vs. just copying code straight from their decompiler and slapping an open source license on it. libogc is very much on the "didn't even try" side of that gradient, it's been known since pretty much forever, and even their documentation is straight up copied from Nintendo's SDKs for part of their libraries.
What's new here is discovering that even the parts people thought were developed "fresh" and not just straight-up asm2c'd from Nintendo are actually stolen from other open source projects in a way that tries to conceal the origin of the code.
Whether you'll find that "more morally reprehensible" or not will largely depend on your personal morals, but clearly for some people that seems to be the case...