Hacking Discussion Team Xecuter Attempted to Bribe RetroNX Developers

[xiaNaix]

I've been trying to piece together what happened here. I've seen chatlogs between Team Xecuter and m4xw and, without breaking any confidences, I don't think either side had bad intentions.

 

[kevin corms]

Here's already 1 case won in china just by googling a second. Not by Nintendo but i can find a ton by big Western companies sueing companies in China itself
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...st-copyright-court-case-in-china-against-bela

Yes people have managed to win some copyright cases in china sometimes, but I doubt they would win this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_in_China

 

[kumikochan]

Yes people have managed to win some copyright cases in china sometimes, but I doubt they would win this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_in_China

here you go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_law_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China

 

[Zumoly]

Is that the same as instead of stretching up and picking an apple from a tree for free I can go to a shop and pay for those same apples that someone has picked already?

Convenience?

Let's not argue for the sake of arguing shall we? Even you by now should have realized TX has shady business practices. Now whether you accept it or not...

Legal? Lets ask Nintendo about what they think of CFW and Emulators running on their console shall we? Many of us don't care for licenses.

Actually it is not so much their consoles after the end user has purchased it and is free to do whatever they will with it.
What they can do and are doing is deprive them from their online services.

 

[astronautlevel]

here you go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_law_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China

Chinese courts give heavy heavy preference to Chinese companies over foreign companies. It's far more difficult and far more rare for a foreign company to beat a Chinese company at IP law.

 

[kevin corms]

here you go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_law_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China

I suggest you read the article I sent, it talks about what the laws are, who created/enforces them and difficulties they have since the government makes a ton of money from infringement.

 

[kumikochan]

Chinese courts give heavy heavy preference to Chinese companies over foreign companies. It's far more difficult and far more rare for a foreign company to beat a Chinese company at IP law.

they have the same copyright laws as the west. They signed the same copyright laws as the west. It's as simple as that so people constantly claiming it is different there are wrong because it says so on black and white that the same laws apply

 

[SeongGino]

Another day, another tired TX vs. FOSS debate.

*sigh*
GPLv3 tidbit referencing source code compliance when distributing binaries.

Literally the top snippet from SNES9x's LICENSE file, in case anyone needs it (Knowing SX, they'd distribute RA as an OotB solution, so)

Can we just, not? It's too early in the bloody morning for this nonsense. TX bribed to steal FOSS code, dev said no, end of story.

 

[kumikochan]

I suggest you read the article I sent, it talks about what the laws are, who created/enforces them and difficulties they have since the government makes a ton of money from infringement.

I do know that Belgium is a big partner of China and a lot of cities in China are sister cities as they call it. I do know that Belgium agreed with China to do more trade if they made sure they would hunt down more fake shit and make sure it wouldn't get shipped as easily anymore wich did a ton because afterwards it was reported that millions of products didn't get in to belgium anymore because of the Chinese goverment hunting down fake shit a lot more so how does that happen ? Anyway i'm off, have fun discussing on this thread

 

[astronautlevel]

they have the same copyright laws as the west. They signed the same copyright laws as the west. It's as simple as that so people constantly claiming it is different there are wrong because it says so on black and white that the same laws apply

The laws on paper are the same, but the enforcement is hugely different. What matters isn't the laws themselves but how the company enforces them.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Literally the top snippet from SNES9x's LICENSE file, in case anyone needs it (Knowing SX, they'd distribute RA as an OotB solution, so)

Read your own picture - it says it's free to distribute "for non-commercial purposes." SX OS doesn't meet those restrictions.

 

[SeongGino]

Read your own picture - it says it's free to distribute "for non-commercial purposes." SX OS doesn't meet those restrictions.

It's a commercial product being paywalled by SX Pro license. Do you really think they'll care enough to distribute this in the non-commercial release?
TX aren't philanthropists.

It's (perhaps) baseless and an accusation, but I don't see any proof to counter this assumption either, so

 

[the_randomizer]

What a bunch of dicks, screw them. I don't care what their goal is, they should do their own damn work for once.

 

[kevin corms]

I do know that Belgium is a big partner of China and a lot of cities in China are sister cities as they call it. I do know that Belgium agreed with China to do more trade if they made sure they would hunt down more fake shit and make sure it wouldn't get shipped as easily anymore wich did a ton because afterwards it was reported that millions of products didn't get in to belgium anymore because of the Chinese goverment hunting down fake shit a lot more so how does that happen ? Anyway i'm off, have fun discussing on this thread

What do you think the chances of a Japanese company beating a Chinese company in Chinese court for ip law? Unless someone was actually making a switch of their own, fat chance.

 

[Insane]

Paragraph 5.c

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

• c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.

I will just leave the counterpoint here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DevelopChangesUnderNDA

Apparently you can work under GPL code in closed source environments!

 

[astronautlevel]

It's a commercial product being paywalled by SX Pro license. Do you really think they'll care enough to distribute this in the non-commercial release?
TX aren't philanthropists.

It's (perhaps) baseless and an accusation, but I don't see any proof to counter this assumption either, so

What? That's exactly my point. SX OS is a commercial product, so software which prohibits commercial usage such as snes9x in it is against the snes9x license.

Unless we're in agreement and I somehow managed to completely misread your original post, in which case I apologize.

 

[FAST6191]

Well this blew up.

Surely this is no different to what companys like apple and microsoft do all the time? Take some of the jailbreak communitys work and feature the good stuff as the latest iOS release? Is it only an issue when TX do something like this??

Personally couldnt care 2 shits about Retroarch or any emulation homebrew. I prefer real hardware with real controllers

First I should plump for emulation – it can do things hardware only dreams of and provide the best way to play games from many perspectives.

Anyway it sounds like this would be different.
Apple, google et al tend to look out into the world see people are using the camera flash all the time in a torch program and then take the idea back and integrate it into their next release (or possibly a function made available for a current one). The torch program's code is presumably never even seen by the apple/google devs. They then make it from scratch and thus owe nothing to anybody unless they somehow managed to have a patent on it in those places where software patents are a thing (mainly the US and Japan, everywhere else considers them an abomination).

In this scenario it sounds like TX went and sought a way to make some specific software in some way exclusive to their platform (for a while?) and this is where this discussion appears. Writing an emulator is a hard thing to do so it is likely easier to buy it in.

First we are probably going to have to look at what open source is. Trouble is it varies between people as to what counts as open source, and there are all sorts of variations on the theme.

Because of something called the halting problem software development is a one way affair most of the time (you take human readable code and convert it to machine readable code, the reverse is far far harder) and laws serve to frustrate those that would put in the effort to go reverse things.
However if you release the human readable code (you open up the source of your code) then anybody else can take said code and make their own machine code from it, possibly tweak it for their own purposes or to make it run on another system…
The laws mentioned earlier do still allow you to place restrictions upon what is done with the code. The nature of these restrictions is what causes much discussion about what counts as open source (a jumping off point being the phrase “Think free as in free speech, not free beer.”. Though for a more practical overview then the main one would be the https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/Free-vs-Open-Source-Software ). The nature of commercial use being a sticking point for a lot of people. Libretro finds itself with an immensely complicated setup as well, partially inherited through history (they make stuff and are a bit more than just a frontend but a lot of their code or the base of it was made by many other people in many other projects with variations things they wanted) and partially by design.

https://docs.libretro.com/tech/licenses/ and you will see several of those oppose commercial use, though how many are key for the experience or could be removed and added back in is up for debate.

In the more simplistic cases there are ways for open source projects to be timed exclusives, have source released for older versions but newer kept under wraps, in some cases the act of running code is different to using it within a project (I can call a command line program in most cases without worry, if I take the code and make it into a library it is a different matter, though there are of course some popular things which allow libraries to be used like the lgpl variation of the popular gpl licence family), some have source released but in a way that makes it very hard for others to gain a version from it (a few of the bigger Linux distributions do something like this – you might only have to release your changes, nothing about having to have those changes be more than a text file with no documentation on the changes about what they do), some sell support with the software (businesses want someone they can call) and there are bundles as well that can charge despite nominally being composed entirely of open source software – one of the very nice system rescue CDs doing this a while back.

Back to libretro it might be possible to strip the stuff from that which prevents its use and 6 grand could be a workable wage for that. Especially if the later snippet about them enquiring about a user made bit of code that attempts to be its own UI is closer to what was actually being asked.

Some mentioned the offer had a rider of them not contributing to other open source projects. Depending upon the phrasing then legally speaking it is inconsequential in this. Practically speaking it is part of the offer and would serve to reduce the value for a lot of people. It should also be noted that while the changes made would go out under a licence you still own your code, indeed there is a massive debate right now within the Linux kernel developers over a code of conduct and some are considering withdrawing their contributions if said code of conduct gets implemented. In other cases as you still own the code you can do things like put it out under multiple licences.

So yeah it seems it is a complex case, and my comment in an earlier post might have been a bit hasty as I was thinking it might be like most normal emulators/open source programs and not the atrocious mess I see on that link. At the same time others claiming there is no way it could be done above board are probably also being a bit hasty, though depending upon how much work gets to be done then 6 grand might be a low offer.

Not everyone, open source is not a business. It's an open sourced project that they do for fun skills and as a hobby. It is something they like to do plus it looks good on their resume.

There is fuckloads of money in open source, any number of projects have corporate backers, sponsors and people issuing direction. There are certainly those that do it as a creative outlet, for fun and for CV padding but if you took out corporate stuff from open source it would probably collapse, certainly find itself undergoing a fundamental restructuring.

 

[kevin corms]

What? That's exactly my point. SX OS is a commercial product, so bundling a product which prohibits commercial usage such as snes9x in it is against the snes9x license.

Unless we're in agreement and I somehow managed to completely misread your original post, in which case I apologize.

SXOS will get around it by offering the emulator and most functionality for free. Only backup loading costs money. These guys know what they are doing.

 

[astronautlevel]

SXOS will get around it by offering the emulator and most functionality for free. Only backup loading costs money.

I don't see why now they'd suddenly start caring about licenses given their blatant disregard for the GPLv3 in the past.

I will just leave the counterpoint here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DevelopChangesUnderNDA

Apparently you can work under GPL code in closed source environments!

You're completely misreading this snippet, you're still not allowed to use GPL projects as a part of closed source projects.

 

[comput3rus3r]

Well this blew up.



First I should plump for emulation – it can so things hardware only dreams of and provide the best way to play games from many perspectives.

Anyway it sounds like this would be different.
Apple, google et al tend to look out into the world see people are using the camera flash all the time in a torch program and then take the idea back and integrate it into their next release (or possibly a function made available for a current one). The torch program's code is presumably never even seen by the apple/google devs. They then make it from scratch and thus owe nothing to anybody unless they somehow managed to have a patent on it in those places where software patents are a thing (mainly the US and Japan, everywhere else considers them an abomination).

In this scenario it sounds like TX went and sought a way to make some specific software in some way exclusive to their platform (for a while?) and this is where this discussion appears. Writing an emulator is a hard thing to do so it is likely easier to buy it in.

First we are probably going to have to look at what open source is. Trouble is it varies between people as to what counts as open source, and there are all sorts of variations on the theme.

Because of something called the halting problem software development is a one way affair most of the time (you take human readable code and convert it to machine readable code, the reverse is far far harder) and laws serve to frustrate those that would put in the effort to go reverse things.
However if you release the human readable code (you open up the source of your code) then anybody else can take said code and make their own machine code from it, possibly tweak it for their own purposes or to make it run on another system…
The laws mentioned earlier do still allow you to place restrictions upon what is done with the code. The nature of these restrictions is what causes much discussion about what counts as open source (a jumping off point being the phrase “Think free as in free speech, not free beer.”. Though for a more practical overview then the main one would be the https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/Free-vs-Open-Source-Software ). The nature of commercial use being a sticking point for a lot of people. Libretro finds itself with an immensely complicated setup as well, partially inherited through history (they make stuff and are a bit more than just a frontend but a lot of their code or the base of it was made by many other people in many other projects with variations things they wanted) and partially by design.

https://docs.libretro.com/tech/licenses/ and you will see several of those oppose commercial use, though how many are key for the experience or could be removed and added back in is up for debate.

In the more simplistic cases there are ways for open source projects to be timed exclusives, have source released for older versions but newer kept under wraps, in some cases the act of running code is different to using it within a project (I can call a command line program in most cases without worry, if I take the code and make it into a library it is a different matter, though there are of course some popular things which allow libraries to be used like the lgpl variation of the popular gpl licence family), some have source released but in a way that makes it very hard for others to gain a version from it (a few of the bigger Linux distributions do something like this – you might only have to release your changes, nothing about having to have those changes be more than a text file with no documentation on the changes about what they do), some sell support with the software (businesses want someone they can call) and there are bundles as well that can charge despite nominally being composed entirely of open source software – one of the very nice system rescue CDs doing this a while back.

Back to libretro it might be possible to strip the stuff from that which prevents its use and 6 grand could be a workable wage for that. Especially if the later snippet about them enquiring about a user made bit of code that attempts to be its own UI is closer to what was actually being asked.

Some mentioned the offer had a rider of them not contributing to other open source projects. Depending upon the phrasing then legally speaking it is inconsequential in this. Practically speaking it is part of the offer and would serve to reduce the value for a lot of people. It should also be noted that while the changes made would go out under a licence you still own your code, indeed there is a massive debate right now within the Linux kernel developers over a code of conduct and some are considering withdrawing their contributions if said code of conduct gets implemented. In other cases as you still own the code you can do things like put it out under multiple licences.

So yeah it seems it is a complex case, and my comment in an earlier post might have been a bit hasty as I was thinking it might be like most normal emulators/open source programs and not the atrocious mess I see on that link. At the same time others claiming there is no way it could be done above board are probably also being a bit hasty, though depending upon how much work gets to be done then 6 grand might be a low offer.


There is fuckloads of money in open source, any number of projects have corporate backers, sponsors and people issuing direction. There are certainly those that do it as a creative outlet, for fun and for CV padding but if you took out corporate stuff from open source it would probably collapse, certainly find itself undergoing a fundamental restructuring.

But nobody wants to listen to your well thought out response. We just want to use our pitchforks! /s

 

[Insane]

I don't see why now they'd suddenly start caring about licenses given their blatant disregard for the GPLv3 in the past.

You're completely misreading this snippet, you're still not allowed to use GPL projects as a part of closed source projects.

*sigh* how about: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic