So, allegedly it stole Nintendo SDK code, and Nintendo never noticed nor filed any kind of injunctions, especially since this was an extremely popular jailbreak tool when the Wii was the current console?
This isn't passing the sniff test. I think Marcan is just trolling.
Not sure trolling is the right word. But it is very strange behaviour, to get so worked up and confrontational publicly, especially as a non-injured party.
Goes right in line with his behaviour in the kernel rust saga. Conclusions are up to the reader.
Marcan is an injured party! If you go to great lengths to build a legally clean open-source project on top of a foundation of supposedly legally clean open-source libraries — absolutely critical libraries that have no currently existing alternative — and then discover that their supposed cleanness was a lie all along, it's not just an abstract insult and betrayal, it's a realisation that the immature actions of others have put an entire scene in legal jeopardy.
Nintendo are selective with their enforcement, and homebrew is never a particularly interesting target when they also have to contend with pirates, who (in some cases) actually are making money off it. Serious emulator and homebrew developers are however very paranoid about avoiding flagrant copyright violations because they create a vulnerability that the likes of Nintendo could choose to enforce if they ultimately piss them off too much, and also simply out of pride in doing things properly. Marcan is among the serious ones. Sadly not everyone is. It is a routine occurrence for emulator developers that they have to deal with people who think that leaked source code etc is something they should consult and pretend they didn't — exactly the kind of attitude that would send chills down the spines of legal counsel.
I want to caution also that the claims here about violating Nintendo copyrights have been known for some time, that part is not new. The open-source plagiarism is the new part and the most upsetting.
This, but also it's so long ago and old, not current or a previous current gen system. The wii was discontinued october 2013, and released November 2006.
Effiectively its 12-19 years old now, for me, while I understand it also kinda falls under "who cares" because homebrew always was always somewhat equal to piracy.
> homebrew always was always somewhat equal to piracy
I can't speak for everyone but personally I find there's a moral imperative in making sure that we can actually own the devices we buy. Comments and sentiments like these needlessly devalue the work being done to achieve this, and is part of why the broader homebrew community is bitter about it.
> homebrew always was always somewhat equal to piracy.
FWIW the price performance ratio of older consoles was better than what you get today. It was impossible to find a high definition video player for under $1000, except for the Xbox. People were more motivated to do real, non-piracy homebrew.
Today, you can buy a raspberry pie for $40. I think that must have something to do with the fading of homebrew.
I installed Homebrew Channel and got all our Wii games ripped to a USB stick. That was far easier and cheaper than to replace the failing DVD player in the Wii. Now the kids can still play all our old Wii games when they want to (not that often to be honest). I have resisted the temptation to sail the seas to expand our game collection beyond the games we already owned.
This. You can get all original Wii games in the used market for little money and this gives you the flexibility to play backups of your original games without loading and unloading discs, faster load times, etc. I understand piracy is the number one goto, but not all sums up to that.
> People were more motivated to do real, non-piracy homebrew.
Gimmicks and ease-of-hacking also matter IMO.
With the Switch, I believe we are seeing the "threat model" (from Nintendo's PoV) shift from on-device hacking to emulation, which is far more scalable and resilient to vuln fixes (system only needs to be hacked "once" to get crypto secrets and to dump code). This enables large-scale piracy and high financial stakes, see the ToTK debacle.
On the other hand, there's no (?) handheld system with 3D like the 3DS; and playing DS/3DS games on emulator feels a bit awkward.
The only thing I'm using my hacked Switch 1 is to dump/restore save files. Thanks to cloud saves and local save transfer, my other Switch units don't need to be hacked.
Nintendo would[1] take all legal measures possible to shut down projects that allow using their hardware in methods they do not approve of. Homebrew Channel isn't new, it's nearly as old as the Wii itself. Nintendo would have had every motivation to go after them for all they're worth, if there was a valid legal claim against Homebrew Channel.
Unfortunately for Nintendo, reverse-engineering a console to run code the first party has not authorized is not actually a violation of any law. Nintendo surely was grumpy at them, but they had no leg to stand on.
[1] And still does, see their takedown of yuzu, who was openly allowing and encouraging Switch piracy in the Discord server.
The blog you linked is to Homebrew, the package manager for macOS. "The Homebrew Channel", the Wii project that is in discussion here, is unrelated despite sharing a name.
There's a legal and moral implication. Legally, saying that you took someone else's code as "source of information" would probably be seen as copyright infringement. Morally, I must say I find it difficult to get worked up about it. How to write a basic OS with a threading implementation shouldn't be rocket science for anyone with a good CS background (yes, I'm aware RTEMS was literally written for rockets, but still). Yes, he took a shortcut here by looking at an existing project, and if this was a commercial project, I might see why one could get angry. However, I also can't really understand why they simply refuse to give credit to the original project and maybe also change the license to GPLv2.
Without a CLA, that's not doable without the approval of all the contributors.
Furthermore, the point of these libraries (libogc, libctru, etc.) are to be a FOSS SDK. Non-permissive license like GPL aren't really an option in this situation.
If I'm not mistaken, RTEMS has been relicensed to BSD-2; even if the licenses were incompatible at the time, they don't seem to be anymore.
> Without a CLA, that's not doable without the approval of all the contributors.
Three things:
- libogc is BSD 3-clause[1], which is GPL-compatible[2][3]. That means that while you can't just strip off the existing BSD license, you can distribute a combination of source code that is BSD and GPL licensed, it just has to be distributed under the terms of the GPL, which is fully compatible with the terms of a BSD license, too, since all BSD licenses require is maintaining the copyright notice/disclaimer, and nothing about that requirement conflicts with the GPL. (IANAL, so take with a grain of salt, but I'm pretty positive on this one.)
- Although RTEMS is traditionally GPL, it's actually a modified version of GPL with the GNAT exception[4]. A compiler exception effectively allows users to link the object files into software of any license without invoking the copyleft provisions, so to my understanding this would basically be identical except for people who are modifying the source code of libogc (I imagine this is exceedingly rare.)
- And finally, RTEMS has been re-licensing to BSD 2-clause for a long time[5], so it's very possible all of the relevant code is now available under a BSD license with effectively equivalent permissiveness.
So actually I think this situation is probably much a nothingburger in that regard...
>Legally, saying that you took someone else's code as "source of information" would probably be seen as copyright infringement
Not necessarily. There are ways to work around that, for example white box reverse-engineering[1]. Also there are exemptions for some use cases, like interoperability. I'm sure a lawyer could figure something out, but it looks like they didn't consult any, and didn't follow a rigorous process.
So, allegedly it stole Nintendo SDK code, and Nintendo never noticed nor filed any kind of injunctions, especially since this was an extremely popular jailbreak tool when the Wii was the current console?
This isn't passing the sniff test. I think Marcan is just trolling.
Not sure trolling is the right word. But it is very strange behaviour, to get so worked up and confrontational publicly, especially as a non-injured party.
Goes right in line with his behaviour in the kernel rust saga. Conclusions are up to the reader.
Marcan is an injured party! If you go to great lengths to build a legally clean open-source project on top of a foundation of supposedly legally clean open-source libraries — absolutely critical libraries that have no currently existing alternative — and then discover that their supposed cleanness was a lie all along, it's not just an abstract insult and betrayal, it's a realisation that the immature actions of others have put an entire scene in legal jeopardy.
It seems to me that he very visibly took an L, and he is still tilted by that. This is also after a wave of harassment from the far right.
Please forgive me for being old, but what the hell does "took an L" mean?
It means to take a loss, as opposed to a W which is a win.
Nintendo are selective with their enforcement, and homebrew is never a particularly interesting target when they also have to contend with pirates, who (in some cases) actually are making money off it. Serious emulator and homebrew developers are however very paranoid about avoiding flagrant copyright violations because they create a vulnerability that the likes of Nintendo could choose to enforce if they ultimately piss them off too much, and also simply out of pride in doing things properly. Marcan is among the serious ones. Sadly not everyone is. It is a routine occurrence for emulator developers that they have to deal with people who think that leaked source code etc is something they should consult and pretend they didn't — exactly the kind of attitude that would send chills down the spines of legal counsel.
I want to caution also that the claims here about violating Nintendo copyrights have been known for some time, that part is not new. The open-source plagiarism is the new part and the most upsetting.
This, but also it's so long ago and old, not current or a previous current gen system. The wii was discontinued october 2013, and released November 2006.
Effiectively its 12-19 years old now, for me, while I understand it also kinda falls under "who cares" because homebrew always was always somewhat equal to piracy.
> homebrew always was always somewhat equal to piracy
I can't speak for everyone but personally I find there's a moral imperative in making sure that we can actually own the devices we buy. Comments and sentiments like these needlessly devalue the work being done to achieve this, and is part of why the broader homebrew community is bitter about it.
> homebrew always was always somewhat equal to piracy.
FWIW the price performance ratio of older consoles was better than what you get today. It was impossible to find a high definition video player for under $1000, except for the Xbox. People were more motivated to do real, non-piracy homebrew.
Today, you can buy a raspberry pie for $40. I think that must have something to do with the fading of homebrew.
I installed Homebrew Channel and got all our Wii games ripped to a USB stick. That was far easier and cheaper than to replace the failing DVD player in the Wii. Now the kids can still play all our old Wii games when they want to (not that often to be honest). I have resisted the temptation to sail the seas to expand our game collection beyond the games we already owned.
This. You can get all original Wii games in the used market for little money and this gives you the flexibility to play backups of your original games without loading and unloading discs, faster load times, etc. I understand piracy is the number one goto, but not all sums up to that.
> People were more motivated to do real, non-piracy homebrew.
Gimmicks and ease-of-hacking also matter IMO.
With the Switch, I believe we are seeing the "threat model" (from Nintendo's PoV) shift from on-device hacking to emulation, which is far more scalable and resilient to vuln fixes (system only needs to be hacked "once" to get crypto secrets and to dump code). This enables large-scale piracy and high financial stakes, see the ToTK debacle.
On the other hand, there's no (?) handheld system with 3D like the 3DS; and playing DS/3DS games on emulator feels a bit awkward.
The only thing I'm using my hacked Switch 1 is to dump/restore save files. Thanks to cloud saves and local save transfer, my other Switch units don't need to be hacked.
Nintendo would[1] take all legal measures possible to shut down projects that allow using their hardware in methods they do not approve of. Homebrew Channel isn't new, it's nearly as old as the Wii itself. Nintendo would have had every motivation to go after them for all they're worth, if there was a valid legal claim against Homebrew Channel.
Unfortunately for Nintendo, reverse-engineering a console to run code the first party has not authorized is not actually a violation of any law. Nintendo surely was grumpy at them, but they had no leg to stand on.
[1] And still does, see their takedown of yuzu, who was openly allowing and encouraging Switch piracy in the Discord server.
Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43812995
<deleted>. My mistake
The blog you linked is to Homebrew, the package manager for macOS. "The Homebrew Channel", the Wii project that is in discussion here, is unrelated despite sharing a name.
Thanks for the correction.
Wrong Homebrew. Totally unrelated to this.
https://mardy.it/blog/2025/04/no-libogc-did-not-steal-rtems-... is a rebuttal
I think this comparison by armada651 linked in yesterday's thread is a better example (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43818214)
https://github.com/atgreen/RTEMS/blob/2f200c7e642c214accb7cc...
https://github.com/devkitPro/libogc/blob/52c525a13fd1762c103...
Multiple functions in that file are near identical.
I am not up-to-date with the drama
The original code this was copied from was open source; why not "just" say "oops we are sorry" and add the attribution?
Licensing issues? But the repo in OP is also GPL?
See also:
https://mas.to/@davejmurphy/114414723608693881
There's a legal and moral implication. Legally, saying that you took someone else's code as "source of information" would probably be seen as copyright infringement. Morally, I must say I find it difficult to get worked up about it. How to write a basic OS with a threading implementation shouldn't be rocket science for anyone with a good CS background (yes, I'm aware RTEMS was literally written for rockets, but still). Yes, he took a shortcut here by looking at an existing project, and if this was a commercial project, I might see why one could get angry. However, I also can't really understand why they simply refuse to give credit to the original project and maybe also change the license to GPLv2.
IANAL, however:
> maybe also change the license to GPLv2
Without a CLA, that's not doable without the approval of all the contributors.
Furthermore, the point of these libraries (libogc, libctru, etc.) are to be a FOSS SDK. Non-permissive license like GPL aren't really an option in this situation.
If I'm not mistaken, RTEMS has been relicensed to BSD-2; even if the licenses were incompatible at the time, they don't seem to be anymore.
> Without a CLA, that's not doable without the approval of all the contributors.
Three things:
- libogc is BSD 3-clause[1], which is GPL-compatible[2][3]. That means that while you can't just strip off the existing BSD license, you can distribute a combination of source code that is BSD and GPL licensed, it just has to be distributed under the terms of the GPL, which is fully compatible with the terms of a BSD license, too, since all BSD licenses require is maintaining the copyright notice/disclaimer, and nothing about that requirement conflicts with the GPL. (IANAL, so take with a grain of salt, but I'm pretty positive on this one.)
- Although RTEMS is traditionally GPL, it's actually a modified version of GPL with the GNAT exception[4]. A compiler exception effectively allows users to link the object files into software of any license without invoking the copyleft provisions, so to my understanding this would basically be identical except for people who are modifying the source code of libogc (I imagine this is exceedingly rare.)
- And finally, RTEMS has been re-licensing to BSD 2-clause for a long time[5], so it's very possible all of the relevant code is now available under a BSD license with effectively equivalent permissiveness.
So actually I think this situation is probably much a nothingburger in that regard...
[1]: https://github.com/devkitPro/libogc/blob/master/libogc_licen...
[2]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#ModifiedBS...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility
[4]: https://gitlab.rtems.org/rtems/rtos/rtems/-/blob/main/LICENS...
[5]: https://gitlab.rtems.org/rtems/rtos/rtems/-/blob/main/LICENS...
Ah then it's easy to solve, if the parties worked together.... which they won't, so, whatever
>Legally, saying that you took someone else's code as "source of information" would probably be seen as copyright infringement
Not necessarily. There are ways to work around that, for example white box reverse-engineering[1]. Also there are exemptions for some use cases, like interoperability. I'm sure a lawyer could figure something out, but it looks like they didn't consult any, and didn't follow a rigorous process.
[1] https://ospo.co/blog/modern-reverse-engineering/ - a random link I found by googling, but presents the idea well.
So this has nothing to do with the Homebrew package manager on macOS? I'm confused.
No, this appears to be for something similarly named for the Nintendo Wii
Homebrew is a general term for software written by hobbyists and is mostly used in the context of running such software on a locked-down system.
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