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Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS

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Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS

#21

Post by kmeisthax »

deng wrote: post #11

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.

I suspect that it was neither for clout nor circumvention, but ignorance and people doubling down on that ignorance. If you are not specifically bathed in the norms of the FOSS community, GPL is kind of an unintuitive concept. It's a copyright license that forces you to disclaim most of the benefits of copyright protection. If you're coming from a piracy or game modding scene, where copyright is a thing you wipe your ass with, even the bare minimum of GPL compliance is going to seem like a waste of time at best and someone else trying to butt in on your project at worst.

Think about how many pirates do piracy because they think copyright is unethical, versus how many of them are data hoarders, or just want shit for free, or are reselling shady IPTV boxes on eBay. The former two groups are FOSS-adjacent, but the latter two do not care. Then keep in mind how basically any free shit tends to be almost immediately abused by children with an Internet connection and no access to payment rails.

Homebrew scenes seem like a candidate for doing things "the right way", but culturally they're a lot closer to piracy scenes than anyone wants to admit, at least in front of a court.

Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS

#22

Post by delroth »

mubou wrote: post #13
arghwhat wrote: post #9

Earlier 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.

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 do…

> HBC had to give up development

HBC has not been under real development for 10+ years. This is mostly a performative act.

Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS

#24

Post by TuxSH »

delroth wrote: post #20
TuxSH wrote: post #15

To 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 ev…

Yes, libogc is a dumpster fire and the dkP org would be better served by rewriting a libogc replacement (w/ a different API) from scratch, quite honestly.

What I find odd is the timing, I highly suspect he learned about it many months ago.

> 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.

Agreed (I replied the same in another comment)

Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS

#25

Post by kmeisthax »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #18
deng wrote: post #11

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.

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…

> 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.

For context, The Homebrew Channel itself was one of these projects. fail0verflow had put shittons of work into DRM for the Channel and its installer... purely so that you couldn't remove an anti-scam warning screen that they'd put in there to warn people about shady people trying to sell The Homebrew Channel.

Thing is, GPL requires you to explicitly allow that behavior[0], so HBC can't use GPL software.

[0] It is extraordinarily difficult to write a blanket copyright license that provides most of the terms we care for but prohibits this kind of behavior, without giving the authors the ability to veto anything they don't like. Standard operating procedure in the FOSS space has been to just allow all commercial activity.

Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS

#26

Post by asiekierka »

kmeisthax wrote: post #25
JoshTriplett wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. For context, The Homebre…

> Thing is, GPL requires you to explicitly allow that behavior, so HBC can't use GPL software.

Couldn't, not at the time. HBC has been open-sourced some time ago, sans DRM, as the Wii has long lost commercial relevance beyond enthusiast communities. This open-source re-release is what the repository is.

Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS

#27

Post by jillyboel »

Since y'all decided to flag my other comment I'll rephrase: Can someone explain what harm is being done by an open source non-commercial project "stealing" code? Who is actually hurt by this, and how?

Let's ignore for the moment nothing was actually stolen since the original authors still have their copies.

Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS

#28

Post by MelodyUwU »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #3

Sad news, though always good to see someone calling out problems. Are there any Wii homebrew loaders that aren't based on libogc?

i dont know of wii homebrew but in the nds space there is BlocksDS which is not part of devkitpro, and in gba space you can get (experimental) toolchains from wf-pacman (wonderful toolchain). sadly, the nintendo homebrew space is ruled by devkitpro, and i spent some time trying to find an alternative to it, but that doesnt seem to exist right now.

Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS

#29

Post by jchw »

jillyboel wrote: post #27

Since y'all decided to flag my other comment I'll rephrase: Can someone explain what harm is being done by an open source non-commercial project "stealing" code? Who is actually hurt by this, and how? Let's ignore for the moment nothing was actually stolen since the original authors still have their copies.

Call it what you want, but it's just disrespectful and unnecessary. I'm sure we've all fucked up somewhere and didn't attribute something correctly, but I feel like once it's been brought to your attention, it's just silly to not at least acknowledge it (especially if people are paying you to work on it). In this case, it's a somewhat serious licensing issue even if it is unlikely to lead to any actual legal action.

Stolen valor isn't really literal theft either, but that doesn't mean it's okay to do it.

Re: Libogc (Wii homebrew library) discovered to contain code stolen from RTEMS

#30

Post by MelodyUwU »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #3

Sad news, though always good to see someone calling out problems. Are there any Wii homebrew loaders that aren't based on libogc?

just realized you asked for something different, and my comment above is on the wrong subject. either way, i dont know of any big library/toolchain/sdk for the wii not from dkP, so the chances of a loader different from hbc and not based on libogc are small, sadly.
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