The Wii homebrew channel has been archived, citing Nintendo SDK code inside a library
GitHub - fail0verflow/hbc: The Homebrew Channel - open source edition
Apparently all Wii homebrew uses this library as well.
RTEMS was developed for use in missiles so it's pretty cool to steal code from it for Wii hacking
At the risk of becoming :can-excuse-1: :can-excuse-2:
I can excuse copying proprietary code but I draw the line at stripping attribution of other open source code.
This goes far beyond ignorance about the copyright implications of reverse engineering Nintendo binaries, and goes straight into outright deliberate, malicious code theft and copyright infringement.
So not even shut down by Nintendo, shut down by someone who went “waaah waaah this is copyright infringement”?
Yeah man you’re making the “Pirate Games” machine of course there’s copyright infringement involved I’m shocked you ever thought there wasn’t
“Program on Wii uses Wii code” no shit? Of course it would. It’s a program on the Wii!
Am I missing something here?
yeah, this looks like an actual violation of trust around not stealing the work of other people in the community of hackers and not just "lol corpo got fucked haha". i would not care if they only used nintendo code, but not citing your sources when they're other open source projects is just rude.
they committed the software equivalent of plagiarism against an open source volunteer project, if the original post is to be believed.
You don't have to take Nintendo's code to make homebrew and stuff, its just easier. Ideally devs would have looked at what the apps did and reproduced the functionality, without copying the exact code. Doing it this way opens them up to DMCA claims in a way doing it properly wouldn't.
Like all the homebrew stuff for switch, if Nintendo could take it down they would. But they can't, it doesn't include copywritten code of theirs.
Maybe my confusion about that lies in the fact that I’ve only ever used homebrew for piracy?
Like okay you managed to do all this without using a single line of Nintendo’s code, now I can play this completely illegitimate copy of Mario Kart without breaking Nintendo’s copyright.
The only reason to not use Nintendo’s code is to avoid getting caught, and seeing as this news is only coming out almost 20 years after the Wii when the homebrew scene has mostly moved on anyway means that wasn’t too big of a concern as long as no one say, in charge of the Wii homebrew software throws a temper tantrum about it.
I instinctively feel like this is the result of some petty nerd drama
Hmm, I wonder how difficult it would be to rewrite this without the stolen code. Obviously, the RTOS stuff could stay the same, just with proper attribution. The Nintendo code would be the hard part, but it may be worth it.