Jos（ユース）Apr 27
libogc, the library used for Wii homebrew development, has been found to plagiarize an open source project: https://github.com/fail0verflow/hbc/blob/80a80251f83f1993c272c58e471d040f3eb1dee9/README.md
hbc/README.md at 80a80251f83f1993c272c58e471d040f3eb1dee9 · fail0verflow/hbc

The Homebrew Channel - open source edition. Contribute to fail0verflow/hbc development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Show threadendrift 🏳️‍⚧️Apr 27

@JosJuice Not this only like 1/3 true bullshit again, and that 1/3 part being shagkur's shoddy decompilation. None of the rest of it is true. We talked to shagkur and he admitted he was using RTEMS as reference and too closely at that, but the examples are cherry-picked and don't represent all of the threading code. Also, since RTEMS has relicensed to BSD years ago, even if it had possibly been a problem for a while it isn't anymore.

As for the decompilation...yeah, it ain't great. But if Nintendo cared about it, they would have done something years ago. Which they didn't.

Shitting on WM for any of this is also completely unnecessary and just makes people even more bitter.

Show threadasieApr 27
@endrift @JosJuice

It is all completely unnecessary, sure. In the end, everyone affected will be back to using libogc by Tuesday; I tried to rally together people to work on a libogc alternative, but it's a lot of work for what is nowadays a very niche platform.

However, it also could have been avoided by putting out a transparent statement saying exactly this any time during the past 16 months (!) since the original accusation repository dropped in January 2024, and that's a big part of my personal frustration. These links spread around in chat rooms, in private circles, but the only time anyone gets a response is when shit hits the proverbial fan. Misconceptions are never clarified, because the homebrew scene has been permanently divided between a private Discord attached to a GitHub organization with dozens of deleted issues on one side, and everyone else on the other side.

As it stands, we've spent years idly wondering if the Wii port of an open source project is legal to distribute or not in the first place. I've spent hours tracking down the original author of a DS touch driver to figure out if it was decompiled and how said decompiled code got into libnds; getting libgl2d at all licensed and getting DLDI headers relicensed.

Even today, I've had to put out misconceptions on four Discord servers, not only to defend the reputation of a project I'm banned from contributing to and many of my friends in the community are banned from contributing to as well, but also to be able to get back to productive things, like not wondering if we're all a bunch of hypocrites if our homebrew releases pirate someone else's code while we proclaim a blanket ban on copyright infringement and just enjoying our awkward little retro console hacking hobby again.

To be clear, I know it's not your fault, but this keeps happening and it seriously makes me want to not contribute to any homebrew scene with a devkitPro-backed toolchain attached, because somehow that's the correlation I'm dealing with here - I don't see this kind of stuff in the NES scene or SNES scene or Mega Drive scene; the N64 and PS1 scenes have problems with leaked/decompiled code, but everyone will transparently tell you where the issues are and many are working on fixing them; the Game Boy scene has a schism of its own but plenty of people work across the drama lines; etc, etc.

I'm going to bed; I'd like to wake up tomorrow in a world where we once again know how to talk to each other.
Show threadendrift 🏳️‍⚧️Apr 27
@asie @JosJuice I may look into filing a PR to attach BSD 2-clause acknowledgments to the lwt stuff if that hasn't happened already. That's really all that needs to be done there. But the decompiled code is...much harder to do anything about. It would require people with expertise, time and motivation, and it's very much a "pick two" type situation. I'm not entirely sure how putting out a statement would really help anything other than try to stave off misinformation, though.
Show threadasieApr 27
@endrift @JosJuice

The acknowledgements will only apply if none of the code in question was removed before the relicensing; however, if what you're saying is true, that should be pretty easy.

TuxSH made it pretty clear in GodMode9 and on HN already that the answer would be to write a clean library, and I agree with him there; however, I've looked for people willing to do it as early as 2023, and nobody with interest had time, nobody with time had interest, while those with both interest and time were already "tainted".

Honestly, if there's one good outcome of this drama, it could be that a group of people forms who take on the challenge...
Show threadender
@asie @endrift @JosJuice hopefully! I'd do that myself if there wasn't a need for the library to use C..
Apr 28 at 12:08amWeb