Hacking Discussion Team Xecuter Attempted to Bribe RetroNX Developers

[the_randomizer]

Under what rights or under what assumption did they think that what they're doing is right? Exclusivity? Really?

 

[xiaNaix]

This honestly seems like a lot of drama that could have easily been avoided had everyone been honest about the situation.

First of all, I was asked to contact m4xw on behalf of Team Xecuter, since I was already on Discord and none of their team uses it. My understanding was that they wanted to work with him and his team to possibly set up an official RetroNX support forum on the TX board. They were hoping to do this with other app developers as well.

Once they made contact with him, there was discussion about the possibility of doing a "branded" version of the emulator. From the chatlogs I saw, they originally talked about just having a button that launched the RetroNX nro and then it advanced to the possibility of integrating the rom list into their menu. Since this would be more complicated as far as coding is concerned, m4xw asked to be paid for his work (as anyone else would) and quoted them a price.

Some time after that he obviously decided not to work with them anymore and instead get involved in the official Libretro port.

I don't think the intention was to make the app exclusive to SX OS, just to have a branded version in addition to his regular releases. Maybe I'm wrong but that's certainly not the impression I got from the chatlogs.

 

[JoeBloggs777]

There you go everybody, proof is provided above by m4xw

I must have missed it, but where does it mention $6000 in the proof?

also I hope not, TX should be working on a better emunand or USB loading not some Retro emualtor.

 

[FAST6191]

Never mind. I take back that part, but all the same, trying to make this build exclusive for Team Xecutor is a stupid thing to try to do. To hell with them, I don't see why people keep sucking them off.

I am not seeing anybody say it would be a good thing and/or result in a better emulator or anything like that. It is the people screaming bribe despite it not being what one would classically call such a thing, and how it is all so inherently unethical and how it could not happen under the law (despite similar projects* happening all the time, and commonly being considered a means of achieving some cash in the open source/free software world) that seems to be getting various people's hackles up.

*libretro has a nightmare license setup, even if it is not what is strictly under discussion, but for more conventional projects where there is one governing licence of the sorts of things seen on places like https://choosealicense.com/ or https://opensource.org/licenses or http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html then there is usually plenty of scope for things.

What, did they really think $6k was enough to do something so illegal and wrong? You'd have to offer me $600k for me to even think about it. $6k wouldn't even cover the legal fees.

Port an emulator frontend that they themselves wrote and assign some measure of exclusivity to a group?

 

[Ev1l0rd]

Hmm, I want some pitchfork action against me.

Let us play how would TX be able to pull this off under the letter of the law but still get their own effectively exclusive build.

At its heart libretro is a frontend for emulators. It seems as well this dev made their own frontend/ui (which as previously covered counts as their own work and thus could be withdrawn). Assume that plays. There are not many developers of great potency working on the Switch (it is a closed device with annoying hacks and of no great power or technical interest) so it should not be too hard to make offers there to buy people off as it were*. Would not work for X86 firefox but far more viable here.
Alternatively it should be possible to basically do all those obfuscation contest tricks (redefine aspects of the language, minimal variable names, false trails and so forth. Better yet as the Switch has some small amount of power over say a PSP which happily emulated 16 bit and older devices, and a few from after that era as well, you could probably afford to burn some cycles and still have playable emulation) and just release uncommented text files. Stuff it on some constantly changing (but available) location, or possibly if it is still “make available to users of your software” and you can get away with emailing them said same after a request then that. Anybody that goes and finds the source now has 400 hours time needed to unpack your uncommented, obfuscated spaghetti.

*here it seems there are those that won't play but historically it has been a worthy gambit.

They presumably make a custom launch path for the said binary program – if it is not a XCI or NSP executable then most people are screwed and they control the OS in this scenario. A bit of obfuscation here never hurt anybody either. Most of this could probably be done without worrying the DRM rules some open source things have, if you can wind in your DRM like you have for the OS stuff then cool.

Each of the emulators gets called modules in the libretro parlance and that is indeed interesting as it would be where I head. Much like XBMC/Kodi merely provides a means to launch those video download plugins and some kind soul makes them and makes them available then fantastic. You strip all reference to libretro from you official communications a la all those custom firefox builds, however much like everybody calls the Chinese action cameras gopro clones then you know places like here will make the connection for you. Anyway provide an API/plugin framework and you are good to go.


If I am unwilling or unable to do something myself I pay someone to do it for me... it has been the case since before recorded history. This thread seems to quite literally be discussing a payment offer for some potential services.

They'd have to FOSS their obscured code. It's very easy. If you modify libretro/retronx in any way, it has to be GPLv3 as well, ergo meaning that the code should be released in a compilable state and you also need to state the changes to the source code (another GPL clause, which was presumably added for this very reason).

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

(Also just to clarify: libretro is a library that provides a common interface for all these emulators. RetroArch is a frontend to libretro.)

 

[FAST6191]

They'd have to FOSS their obscured code. It's very easy. If you modify libretro/retronx in any way, it has to be GPLv3 as well, ergo meaning that the code should be released in a compilable state and you also need to state the changes to the source code (another GPL clause, which was presumably added for this very reason).

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

(Also just to clarify: libretro is a library that provides a common interface for all these emulators. RetroArch is a frontend to libretro.)

There seems to be more than GPLv3 involved here ( https://docs.libretro.com/tech/licenses/ ), several of which are far more geared for exclusivity, and none of what I said would be frustrated by the things you bring up.

State changes is a simple diff, no requirements for documentation/comments. You would be a fool to accept it into your nice clean code base (another perk for TX in this scenario).
The compilable state thing could still be achieved as well, especially if you do manage to include a call to a nice API (again they control the OS) or aim your build at a tweaked memory layout or something.

 

[Lumince]

This honestly seems like a lot of drama that could have easily been avoided had everyone been honest about the situation.

First of all, I was asked to contact m4xw on behalf of Team Xecuter, since I was already on Discord and none of their team uses it. My understanding was that they wanted to work with him and his team to possibly set up an official RetroNX support forum on the TX board. They were hoping to do this with other app developers as well.

Once they made contact with him, there was discussion about the possibility of doing a "branded" version of the emulator. From the chatlogs I saw, they originally talked about just having a button that launched the RetroNX nro and then it advanced to the possibility of integrating the rom list into their menu. Since this would be more complicated as far as coding is concerned, m4xw asked to be paid for his work (as anyone else would) and quoted them a price.

Some time after that he obviously decided not to work with them anymore and instead get involved in the official Libretro port.

I don't think the intention was to make the app exclusive to SX OS, just to have a branded version in addition to his regular releases. Maybe I'm wrong but that's certainly not the impression I got from the chatlogs.

So... this gives me the impression that this was over exaggerated a little bit just to stir the pot?

 

[WiiuGold]

m4xw ask to get payed .. he just losted 6k. TX will still add it

 

[Darksabre72]

Never mind. I take back that part, but all the same, trying to make this build exclusive for Team Xecutor is a stupid thing to try to do. To hell with them, I don't see why people keep sucking them off.

personally i think it has something to do with atmosphere taking to long and people wanted a way for modding the switch easily right now instead of waiting

 

[Essasetic]

m4xw ask to get payed .. he just losted 6k. TX will still add it

Yeah no. They can't do that.

 

[Lumince]

m4xw ask to get payed .. he just losted 6k. TX will still add it

Now THAT is quality entertainment there. Adding it anyways! YES! Good show!

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

Yeah no. They can't do that.

I mean.... they can... LOL

 

[SeongGino]

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

In which case, yes; we were.
The last thing I wanna waste time on is an anti-community effort like TX, because frankly, this discussion board war has been going on for far too long.

Competition's fine, as long as there's actual innovation, y'know? That's the point being made here in the first place.

 

[m4xw]

m4xw ask to get payed .. he just losted 6k. TX will still add it

And because you have proven what you are capable of, we can even send you down payment to show you good faith.

put_litter_in_its_place:

 

[Lumince]

put_litter_in_its_place:

ohhhhh snap. This is getting good. They sent a down payment?!?!?!

 

[Deleted User]

This honestly seems like a lot of drama that could have easily been avoided had everyone been honest about the situation.

First of all, I was asked to contact m4xw on behalf of Team Xecuter, since I was already on Discord and none of their team uses it. My understanding was that they wanted to work with him and his team to possibly set up an official RetroNX support forum on the TX board. They were hoping to do this with other app developers as well.

Once they made contact with him, there was discussion about the possibility of doing a "branded" version of the emulator. From the chatlogs I saw, they originally talked about just having a button that launched the RetroNX nro and then it advanced to the possibility of integrating the rom list into their menu. Since this would be more complicated as far as coding is concerned, m4xw asked to be paid for his work (as anyone else would) and quoted them a price.

Some time after that he obviously decided not to work with them anymore and instead get involved in the official Libretro port.

I don't think the intention was to make the app exclusive to SX OS, just to have a branded version in addition to his regular releases. Maybe I'm wrong but that's certainly not the impression I got from the chatlogs.

So why do libretro and m4xw say this is a bribe? The way you say it sounds like m4xw iniated talking about getting paid

 

[m4xw]

ohhhhh snap. This is getting good. They sent a down payment?!?!?!

I wouldve never accepted that

 

[xiaNaix]

So why do libretro and m4xw say this is a bribe? The way you say it sounds like m4xw iniated talking about getting paid

ohhhhh snap. This is getting good. They sent a down payment?!?!?!

I don't see anything in the chatlogs that constitutes a bribe. In addition, since he decided not to continue working with them, no money ever exchanged hands.

 

[m4xw]

I don't see anything in the chatlogs that constitutes a bribe. In addition, since he decided not to continue working with them, no money ever exchanged hands.

It was a bribe the second I got told to stop working on other opensource projects and break licenses

 

[JoeBloggs777]

put_litter_in_its_place:

to me from what's been posted on here, I got the impression they just sent you a message but it looks like now you've been chatting to TX, why instead of cherry picking and pasting, why dont you paste all the chat logs ?

 

[Deleted User]

It was a bribe the second I got told to stop working on other opensource projects and break licenses

It's a whole different matter if you iniated the talk about getting paid. So, did you or not?