I was wondering why that was on TPB. And it's in Dolphin's best interest to not let any of their devs look at the code, that would be terrible for their claims of clean room reverse engineering....
I was wondering why that was on TPB.
And it's in Dolphin's best interest to not let any of their devs look at the code, that would be terrible for their claims of clean room reverse engineering. Those projects have clauses where anybody who has looked at the original code can not contribute.
Clause wasn't the best word for it because that implies a formal contract, but I can cite ReactOS: Dolphin, on Twitter mentioned they can't have anybody look at it because they do a clean room...
Clause wasn't the best word for it because that implies a formal contract, but I can cite ReactOS:
Developers (devs) have not looked at Microsoft Windows™ source code. They have used the public documentation of Microsoft Windows OSes. They have made several tests to understand how Microsoft Windows works. In fact, ReactOS does the same things that Windows does but it does it differently as we don't have the same source code and it is all programmed by different developers. All code in ReactOS is released under the GNU GPL (General Public License).
Suppose I acquire the code entirely anonymously on an air gaped computer, which I throw in the ocean right after reading the code. Then I proceed to make an emulator from scratch using zero code...
Suppose I acquire the code entirely anonymously on an air gaped computer, which I throw in the ocean right after reading the code. Then I proceed to make an emulator from scratch using zero code from Nintendo. Wouldn’t I be pretty much in the clear?
IANAL, but my understanding is that if you touch the poisoned code, and then make an emulator of the same console, there's enough probable cause for Nintendo to make your life miserable, even if...
IANAL, but my understanding is that if you touch the poisoned code, and then make an emulator of the same console, there's enough probable cause for Nintendo to make your life miserable, even if that particular situation doesn't have precedent.
If your question was "if nobody ever finds out that I've broken the law, can I get away with breaking the law", then the answer is generally yes. That is one hell of a hypothetical, though.
If your question was "if nobody ever finds out that I've broken the law, can I get away with breaking the law", then the answer is generally yes.
If it's known that the source code had leaked, and you frequently referenced the leaked code during development of your clone, then if they are just able to prove you had the ability to access the...
If it's known that the source code had leaked, and you frequently referenced the leaked code during development of your clone, then if they are just able to prove you had the ability to access the leaked source code, a forensic analysis of the codebases can be used to build a pretty compelling case against you.
If you are doing a lot of copying (enough copying that you are actually saving yourself a substantial amount of effort by copying), if the project is big enough it'll be pretty obvious if you copied or not, basically.
In the purely practical sense of the hypothetical, given that nobody can prove that you saw the code, I think you'd likely be in the clear. If Nintendo really wanted to, they still might be able...
In the purely practical sense of the hypothetical, given that nobody can prove that you saw the code, I think you'd likely be in the clear.
If Nintendo really wanted to, they still might be able to cause you some problems: particularly in a civil suit ("preponderance of the evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt"), they could probably build a reasonable case suggesting that you built the emulator surprisingly quickly, with surprisingly similar design choices to their own, shortly after the source code was leaked.
"Zero code from Nintendo" is a functional improbability even if you haven't seen the code, as the emulator will likely gravitate to solving certain problems in the same way as the original console; the variable names might differ, but there will be some blocks where the structure is basically identical. How often this happens, when, and in what sections could potentially be enough to tilt the scales against you.
All that said, my understanding is that even the famously litigious Nintendo only tend to hassle ROM sites, not the emulators themselves, which means the chances of them coming after you when there's no suggestion you'd seen the code are slim to none. So, like I said up top, you'd likely be in the clear.
From a purely legal point of view, with an omniscient observer, it'd probably make for an interesting debate. Are you stealing their intellectual property in the form of the ideas you learned, even if you aren't using their code? Are you infringing on patents, in which case they'll be close to (if not already past) expiry? Does your new code count as a derivative work even if it doesn't directly contain content from the infringing code? What counts as "content" here - lines of code, structures, algorithms?
If you're the only one with knowledge that you viewed the source code, and you don't implement anything in the same way, even if the output is identical, you should be okay, but if there's even a...
If you're the only one with knowledge that you viewed the source code, and you don't implement anything in the same way, even if the output is identical, you should be okay, but if there's even a whisper that you saw the source, you could be in trouble.
I can't find any specific clauses in their development docs, but they do have a very strict "no warez/downloading games talk" policy in their forums, and one prominent dev has publicly stated they...
It makes me wonder what the implications would be if someone were to use this code directly as the basis for that clean room design. They could likely write a much better spec for the Dolphin devs...
And it's in Dolphin's best interest to not let any of their devs look at the code, that would be terrible for their claims of clean room reverse engineering.
It makes me wonder what the implications would be if someone were to use this code directly as the basis for that clean room design. They could likely write a much better spec for the Dolphin devs to follow, compared to extracting that knowledge from the final product. Would the spec still be tainted in that situation?
I don't blame Dolphin for not wanting to be the test case in this situation, obviously, but I do wonder whether there's precedent for a clean room rebuild where the people in the clean room were using a source that was technically illegal to own, rather than just illegal to copy.
I saw some speculation on /r/emulation that CEMU was based on official Nintendo API documentation, and they're closed source to avoid legal liability. So, it wouldn't be as clean as possible, and...
I saw some speculation on /r/emulation that CEMU was based on official Nintendo API documentation, and they're closed source to avoid legal liability. So, it wouldn't be as clean as possible, and the project would be in some legal hot water for using work derived from the source code, even if it's just a specification.
Even projects like OpenRCT2 used a decompilation rather than original source.
No, perfect emulation is very hard to achieve. The SNES emulator higen is one of the few to basically reach it. Note that it's actually quite resource intensive, considering it's an SNES emulator....
No, perfect emulation is very hard to achieve. The SNES emulator higen is one of the few to basically reach it. Note that it's actually quite resource intensive, considering it's an SNES emulator.
However, most people just want to play games, a few imperfections or some random shovelware that runs poorly is not noticed by most people.
I was wondering why that was on TPB.
And it's in Dolphin's best interest to not let any of their devs look at the code, that would be terrible for their claims of clean room reverse engineering. Those projects have clauses where anybody who has looked at the original code can not contribute.
Source?
Clause wasn't the best word for it because that implies a formal contract, but I can cite ReactOS:
Dolphin, on Twitter mentioned they can't have anybody look at it because they do a clean room engineering process, and I've seen projects looking for people with having not seen the original source code as a requirement to help with development.
Suppose I acquire the code entirely anonymously on an air gaped computer, which I throw in the ocean right after reading the code. Then I proceed to make an emulator from scratch using zero code from Nintendo. Wouldn’t I be pretty much in the clear?
IANAL, but my understanding is that if you touch the poisoned code, and then make an emulator of the same console, there's enough probable cause for Nintendo to make your life miserable, even if that particular situation doesn't have precedent.
Yes of course but it’s very easy to conceal the fact that you’ve read the code.
If your question was "if nobody ever finds out that I've broken the law, can I get away with breaking the law", then the answer is generally yes.
That is one hell of a hypothetical, though.
It would be super easy to stay ou of trouble, I think the issue here is that if you get in trouble you’re pretty much fucked.
If it's known that the source code had leaked, and you frequently referenced the leaked code during development of your clone, then if they are just able to prove you had the ability to access the leaked source code, a forensic analysis of the codebases can be used to build a pretty compelling case against you.
If you are doing a lot of copying (enough copying that you are actually saving yourself a substantial amount of effort by copying), if the project is big enough it'll be pretty obvious if you copied or not, basically.
In the purely practical sense of the hypothetical, given that nobody can prove that you saw the code, I think you'd likely be in the clear.
If Nintendo really wanted to, they still might be able to cause you some problems: particularly in a civil suit ("preponderance of the evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt"), they could probably build a reasonable case suggesting that you built the emulator surprisingly quickly, with surprisingly similar design choices to their own, shortly after the source code was leaked.
"Zero code from Nintendo" is a functional improbability even if you haven't seen the code, as the emulator will likely gravitate to solving certain problems in the same way as the original console; the variable names might differ, but there will be some blocks where the structure is basically identical. How often this happens, when, and in what sections could potentially be enough to tilt the scales against you.
All that said, my understanding is that even the famously litigious Nintendo only tend to hassle ROM sites, not the emulators themselves, which means the chances of them coming after you when there's no suggestion you'd seen the code are slim to none. So, like I said up top, you'd likely be in the clear.
From a purely legal point of view, with an omniscient observer, it'd probably make for an interesting debate. Are you stealing their intellectual property in the form of the ideas you learned, even if you aren't using their code? Are you infringing on patents, in which case they'll be close to (if not already past) expiry? Does your new code count as a derivative work even if it doesn't directly contain content from the infringing code? What counts as "content" here - lines of code, structures, algorithms?
If you're the only one with knowledge that you viewed the source code, and you don't implement anything in the same way, even if the output is identical, you should be okay, but if there's even a whisper that you saw the source, you could be in trouble.
I can't find any specific clauses in their development docs, but they do have a very strict "no warez/downloading games talk" policy in their forums, and one prominent dev has publicly stated they will not be looking at the leak, and that others in the dev team share that sentiment:
https://old.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/gc38h2/looks_like_a_recent_leak_might_help/fpccrq2/
It makes me wonder what the implications would be if someone were to use this code directly as the basis for that clean room design. They could likely write a much better spec for the Dolphin devs to follow, compared to extracting that knowledge from the final product. Would the spec still be tainted in that situation?
I don't blame Dolphin for not wanting to be the test case in this situation, obviously, but I do wonder whether there's precedent for a clean room rebuild where the people in the clean room were using a source that was technically illegal to own, rather than just illegal to copy.
I saw some speculation on /r/emulation that CEMU was based on official Nintendo API documentation, and they're closed source to avoid legal liability. So, it wouldn't be as clean as possible, and the project would be in some legal hot water for using work derived from the source code, even if it's just a specification.
Even projects like OpenRCT2 used a decompilation rather than original source.
Isn't Wii emulation nearly perfect anyway? I can't imagine they're too tempted to peek.
According to this table, 34.6% of GameCube and Wii titles are thought to emulate perfectly in Dolphin.
Thanks for the stats
No. Even "good" games are documented as having some significant, if rare, flaws in emulation.
No, perfect emulation is very hard to achieve. The SNES emulator higen is one of the few to basically reach it. Note that it's actually quite resource intensive, considering it's an SNES emulator.
However, most people just want to play games, a few imperfections or some random shovelware that runs poorly is not noticed by most people.
Not "allegedly", it was actually leaked.