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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

#71

Post by jchw »

asiekierka wrote: post #26
kmeisthax wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Also worth noting: the version of GPL used by RTEMS seems to be one with a compiler exception, so it probably wouldn't have been an issue for HBC.

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

#72

Post by jillyboel »

jchw wrote: post #29
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.…

Okay, sure. But the question is what harm is being done. Am I understanding you correctly that your answer is that there is none?

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

#73

Post by saagarjha »

p_ing wrote: post #39
inamberclad wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RTEMS is under active development and is running around the solar system right now :)

Wow! What an achievement for those devs. https://www.rtems.org/applications/

It’s a missile OS so this isn’t particularly surprising.

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

#74

Post by saagarjha »

jillyboel wrote: post #72
jchw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Okay, sure. But the question is what harm is being done. Am I understanding you correctly that your answer is that there is none?

Would you accept any definition of harm short of money being lost or someone beating you with a club?

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

#75

Post by ThatPlayer »

arghwhat wrote: post #14
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #4

How 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 c…

> the original authors did not write the decompiled source

This isn't anything new or unique to programming. In the same way if I were to transcribe a movie (let's say it's a silent movie) to a script, it would still be that movie. Or if I were to translate a book into Klingon . Or even do a cover song of "Beat It" entirely with throat singing. Copyright would still apply.

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

saagarjha wrote: post #74
jillyboel wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, sure. But the question is what harm is being done. Am I understanding you correctly that your answer is that there is none?

Would you accept any definition of harm short of money being lost or someone beating you with a club?

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by iczero »

jillyboel wrote: post #72
jchw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Okay, sure. But the question is what harm is being done. Am I understanding you correctly that your answer is that there is none?

Your code is my code actually. I wrote all of it. Where's the harm?

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

#80

Post by shakna »

DidYaWipe wrote: post #76

What is "RTEMS?"

> RTEMS is an open source Real Time Operating System (RTOS) that supports open standard application programming interfaces (API) such as POSIX. RTEMS stands for Real-Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems. It is used in space flight, medical, networking and many more embedded devices. RTEMS currently supports 18 processor architectures and approximately 200 Board support packages.

https://www.rtems.org/

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