I'm super confused about this Nintendo source code leak

[Rabbid4240]

I generally dont know anything about source code aside from the fact that its code and stuff. Is this leak bad? Would it be illegal to download the source code? How do people even get this code?

 

[Shadow#1]

I generally dont know anything about source code aside from the fact that its code and stuff. Is this leak bad? Would it be illegal to download the source code? How do people even get this code?

Who hold u countable for downloading it?

 

[Jayro]

Only GOOD can come from these leaks, since it's all old stuff. The only bad thing I could possibly see is maybe delaying or scrapping the SM64 remake because of this.

 

[osaka35]

I generally dont know anything about source code aside from the fact that its code and stuff. Is this leak bad? Would it be illegal to download the source code? How do people even get this code?

Source code basically means there's no guess-work. it's all the copy-righted code without obfuscation. And so yes, copyrighted materials, downloading it is not legal, which is why you won't see any links on GBAtemp pointing to it

Most times we don't have access to such code and it's guess-work, figuring how things work and trying to replicate them with your own code. This is things like emulators, and are totally legal. If you didn't have to do any guess-work and were working from someone else's code, that's the equivalent of plagiarism, thus illegal. That's why anything that comes out of this open-source code as not legal to be shared.

BUT without the guess-work, it'll be easier to know what's going on and to make a lot of stuff happen that maybe wasn't possible before. maybe. possible. there's a lot to figure out, basically. It's...more complicated than that, and there are other perks, but others will explain it better than me.

 

[JuanMena]

Could this mean that someone could actually look EXACTLY how Nintendo managed to emulate N64 games perfectly... and update Not64 or Wii64 based on the source code?

DONKEY KONG 64.WAD IS ON IT'S WAY?

 

[Jayro]

Could this mean that someone could actually look EXACTLY how Nintendo managed to emulate N64 games perfectly... and update Not64 or Wii64 based on the source code?

DONKEY KONG 64.WAD IS ON IT'S WAY?

I sure hope people release stuff derived from it anyways, this info is too good to just be stared at. You KNOW something good will come eventually.

 

[JuanMena]

That's my expectation.
I'd love to see people releasing perfectly injected wads of N64 games.

Conker's Bad Fur Day
Banjo Kazooie
Donkey Kong 64
Golden Eye 007
Perfect Dark
Cruisin' World
Carmageddon
Star Wars Shadow of the Empire
Star Wars Racer
Pokemon Stadium 2

Xena Warrior Princess

These are my wish list!

 

[CMDreamer]

This source code, demos and technical info, is not usefull for non devs, because they (the non devs) start guessing this and that and requesting/dreaming/prophetizing/hallucinating things that can be done with it, even though they don't understand a single line of code, nor technical data.

This in the correct hands means infinite possibilities, but as already has been stated, deriving your work from others' is plagiarism (unless it was meant to be open from the very begining) and afaik scene devs like to discover and do things by themselves. Even then, having a glimpse of how things are done from the original source (the creators, engineers and devs), opens everyone's eyes into a new way of doing things.

All in all, this is illegal, because the content and information was not meant to be shared, and was obtained -afaik- in an illegal way.

Time will tell...

 

[Jayro]

This source code, demos and technical info, is not usefull for non devs, because they (the non devs) start guessing this and that and requesting/dreaming/prophetizing/hallucinating things that can be done with it, even though they don't understand a single line of code, nor technical data.

This in the correct hands means infinite possibilities, but as already has been stated, deriving your work from others' is plagiarism (unless it was meant to be open from the very begining) and afaik scene devs like to discover and do things by themselves. Even then, having a glimpse of how things are done from the original source (the creators, engineers and devs), opens everyone's eyes into a new way of doing things.

All in all, this is illegal, because the content and information was not meant to be shared, and was obtained -afaik- in an illegal way.

Time will tell...

I can't possibly imagine having a moral compass when it comes to software. It's just not in me. If someone uses the code as a reference in their emulator, but doesn't copy it and actually writes their own code, there's nothing wrong with that. It's no different than writing an essay, and using online resources written in your own words.

 

[CMDreamer]

I can't possibly imagine having a moral compass when it comes to software. It's just not in me. If someone uses the code as a reference in their emulator, but doesn't copy it and actually writes their own code, there's nothing wrong with that. It's no different than writing an essay, and using online resources written in your own words.

Precisely, when writing an essay and using "your own words" but using other people's ideas to sustain them without quoting them nor giving the apropriate credit, you would be commiting plagiarism.

The same can be said about software (source code), if you're using methods created by other programmer, that hasn't given implicit permission to use his/her code on other projects, you would be commiting plagiarism too.

It's as simple as that, there's no need to come with complex ideas to understand this fact.

 

[Rabbid4240]

Only GOOD can come from these leaks, since it's all old stuff. The only bad thing I could possibly see is maybe delaying or scrapping the SM64 remake because of this.

I just thought it would be a bad thing because of the TF2 source leak. But that's probably only because it's an online game

 

[Solid One]

In the case of TF2, source code leaking can lead to disavantages due to the game being mostly online (there may have leakings about user accounts, per example). And since all Valve FPS Games already runs natively on Linux (due to Steam porting their game themselves), there's almost no advantage of having a source code in order to port it to other platforms.

However, having game source codes released on the internet has proved being extremely benefical to most people. The greatest example is ID Software's older FPS games such as classic Doom and Quake games. Thanks to that, you can play those games natively on Switch, 3DS, smartphones, raspberry pi and so on. The same can't be said of Epic's older FPS games Unreal and Unreal Tournament, that you can't play those games on other platforms besides Windows and Linux.

In the case of recent Nintendo source code leakings, that'll indeed lead to lots of new stuff. Wii homebrews can be improved with those new data, and being able to port and improve N64 games will be awesome for the retro emulation scene. Imagine having the possibility of playing 007 GoldenEye on other platforms, or even playing it online (not considering the use of online emulators through Kaillera)?

 

[FAST6191]

I generally dont know anything about source code aside from the fact that its code and stuff. Is this leak bad? Would it be illegal to download the source code? How do people even get this code?

Turning code from high level code that humans can read into things computers can understand is generally considered to be a one way affair for most things, certainly anything you want to run at any speed or get down and dirty with transistors for. We can cover the maths of it if you really want (for a start look up the halting problem) but that would probably be needless.
You can go backwards, and new techniques to speed it up are being made/discovered/developed all the time, but they are all typically a lot of time and a lot of effort on the part of people that have spent a lot of time learning some generally considered to be very hard times, this even more so if they have to do it in ways copyright laws are more agreeable to.

In a business you will usually want to keep this original human readable code secret to prevent people from copying it, from finding bugs they can exploit and so forth. However you might need to share it with other developers, hardware makers, people doing security audits and whatever else. Years after the fact it might be nice to release something so your fans can have a look, or people can possibly work around problems they have from needing old software.
Leaks of this code however can happen from insecurity in your company, leaks from the third parties mentioned and other things. Badly secured internet facing servers, someone throwing out an old hard drive, someone actively leaking it if they got fired and it upset them... this list goes on for a long time and there are thousands more options.

Illegal to download? Varies depending upon where you are. Some places don't care about downloads (uploads/sharing being the thing they care about), and even then most people won't be able to do anything with it so if they did sue you it would not get far (this guy pirated our game, we are out so much as a result is easy enough, this has less clear damages).

Is it bad? Presumably you mean for Nintendo.
Not really. Most of the consoles covered by the leak are old, well understood by the general public*, generally emulated pretty well already (with any failures easy enough to fix if people wanted to), completely owned in all models that matter by hackers and will be forever more. If your new console's data gets leaked that can represent a bigger problem, though there are worse things that can happen (see something like the leaked private keys for the PS3 and PSP, something that this appears not to be). Nothing that happens as a result of this, if anything happens at all, will not have been able to happen before now both in a pure technical sense and reasonably practical sense -- I see some people talking about adding say gamecube controller support to the wii menu so you don't need to fish out a wii remote, any half competent hacker could have added that in a weekend probably about the time we were all using USB loaders that showed nice covers (2 weekends from about the time we first started installing custom IOS modules worth a damn as there would have been a bit more to do there). Controller remapping is harder but again not out of the realm of possibility for those that really cared (to say nothing of being able to add it at game level).
Some of the demos are nice to have.
It would be considered bad PR for purposes of their business, and Nintendo have been incredibly tight lipped as a company in general (Sony and MS have been far more open, and nobody is going to call them open source favouring companies) and I am sure there are some very concerned security people at Nintendo right now.

*this is often a use of such leaked code as it means if people want to look at it (not always a wise plan as any that do will technically be considered tainted forever for the purposes of contributing to emulators -- you never know if you will remember some quirk, fix a bug in an emulator with it and thus the owners of the device being emulated could be able to say only someone that read the leaked/protected code would know this, possibly because the documentation was deliberately wrong, and out pop the lawyers. See clean room reverse engineering if you want more on that general concept.) they might understand more than what was already known without having to poke at it and try to understand it from that.

So yeah it is mostly useful to curious nerds and history buffs.

 

[Ecchi95]

I generally dont know anything about source code aside from the fact that its code and stuff. Is this leak bad? Would it be illegal to download the source code? How do people even get this code?

Just like with every single proprietary source package leaked in the past, shit is NOT going to happen just from private use.

Only if you put it in something you release publicly without rewriting it first.

 

[FAST6191]

Just like with every single proprietary source package leaked in the past, shit is NOT going to happen just from private use.

Only if you put it in something you release publicly without rewriting it first.

Does it have a chilling effect? Absolutely, and probably even more so here if the homebrew stuff exceeds the commercial stuff now made available.

Does it stop it basically dead in its tracks? Not so much.

There have been a few leaked games, source recalls (bink/rad video libraries not being allowed to be released I believe it was), various decryption methods, potentially most of the original xbox homebrew scene depending upon how you want to view that one, several leaked SDK components on the GBA, less so on the DS but still there and this goes on.
It usually then just means the binaries get stuffed on private servers (see xbins for the original xbox and to a lesser extent the 360), distributed as diffs/patches, distributed as source or obfuscated and used anyway.