Homebrew Question Is this website a viable place to get news on homebrew?

[BLCKBLuR]

The site I found I had gotten from the /HBG/ discord. It's https://www.xbins.org/index.php?action=catsearch&searchtxt=SWITCH

It seems super legit to me, but I have never heard of it before, so I had to ask.

Just from looking at that list for 30 seconds, I already found 2 useful homebrews that I never heard of before.

Ofcourse I would only download them from their official githubs/pages. I only wanna know if this site is good for getting Homebrew News like it says.

 

[Garou]

yes. the link will be removed by mod soon though

 

[Qubarf]

Woah, the list is awesome

 

[cots]

The site I found I had gotten from

The site (xbins) is a good indexer of homebrew. If you want actual news try this one.

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

yes. the link will be removed by mod soon though

Heh, Gbatemp have beef with xbins? When I was using xbins for xbox scene releases gbatemp was still offering the latest 10 commercial pirated gba roms to download (no forums).

 

[hippy dave]

Heh, Gbatemp have beef with xbins? When I was using xbins for xbox scene releases gbatemp was still offering the latest 10 commercial pirated gba roms to download (no forums).

No beef, just the site rules, no links to sites with copyrighted content (I know xbins has firmware files, dunno if there's anything else). Xbins is well regarded around here, just can't be linked to directly.

 

[iriez]

Thanks for discussing xbins fellas. Just to clear up any confusion, there were a few over zealous mods who were inappropriately censoring xbins. Xbins (www) has never hosted any grey area content (xdks/roms/etc) and should never be censored. The FTP does have cfws and ofws but is never directly advertised. The FTP is a hacking and homebrew repository but we have never, and will never host pirated commercial content.

I have permission from the admins here to post the site and everything has been cleared up so xbins should never be censored going forward.

To OPs questions - xbins has existed a few years since before gbatemp. We were the first "app store" to exist for console hacking. You can find us on #xbins efnet on irc if you wish to access the repository.

Yes, the site is legit. It's also the most "0 sec" you can get for news...most of the posts you see here on gbatemp for new releases are posted from people who monitor the channel/site. I spent and continue to spend a lot of my personal time building automated processes to stay on top of every and all switch scene related software. Xbins directly monitors every known GitHub/gitlab repo and auto-posts whenever there is a new software release.

As for our history ...when the Xbox became hackable I started xbins in 2002. If you were a Homebrew developer and wanted the world to know you had a new app you would have released your stuff through xbins. We were the central repo for all console hacking for a good 7-8 years before anyone else even tried to do what we were doing. Everything on xbins is tested and safe.

PM me if you would like access to our auto-client for our ftp so you don't have to visit our irc channel.

 

[BLCKBLuR]

Thanks for all the replies everyone!

The site (xbins) is a good indexer of homebrew. If you want actual news try this one.

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



Heh, Gbatemp have beef with xbins? When I was using xbins for xbox scene releases gbatemp was still offering the latest 10 commercial pirated gba roms to download (no forums).

Thanks for the link! I appreciate the info!

 

[blawar]

The site I found I had gotten from the /HBG/ discord. It's https://www.xbins.org/index.php?action=catsearch&searchtxt=SWITCH

It seems super legit to me, but I have never heard of it before, so I had to ask.

Just from looking at that list for 30 seconds, I already found 2 useful homebrews that I never heard of before.

Ofcourse I would only download them from their official githubs/pages. I only wanna know if this site is good for getting Homebrew News like it says.

I would not recommend it, since it does not have the best switch homebrew apps due to political reasons. There is some good shit intentionally missing.

 

[hippy dave]

Protip: never listen to blawar for political reasons.

 

[iriez]

I would not recommend it, since it does not have the best switch homebrew apps due to political reasons. There is some good shit intentionally missing.

As far as im aware, there is only a single application (sx installer) that does not exist on xbins and that is due to the fact that its commercial software for a licensed product, and hosting it serves no purpose. If you wish to purchase applications associated with your product you should purchase them from the manufacturer/distributor of that licensed content, unless you are suggesting that I should host the cracked version of the software?

Was there another application not hosted on xbins? I've chosen not to host xecuter CFW's for the same reason as listed above. You want support for the product you purchased? Get it from the people who sold it to you. xbins does not exist for commercial purposes, it exists solely to support the community. I will very happily host all xecuter products the moment they decide to give it for free to the community.

The only other application that I've ever decided to not host was that freeshop nonsense for very obvious reasons. I will not judge people who wish to hack/crack and make the best of their consoles, regardless of their moral position on piracy, but I absolutely will not host software whose sole purpose is to pirate games.

If you think that I have some personal vendetta against you, you are incorrect. I currently host some of your other repositories (incognito off the top of my mind) so you cannot claim that I've chosen to single you out. I think you're a talented individual who does good work, and there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of the infrastructure that was built before you, as long as you acknowledge the work that those people did who laid the foundation for you to exist. Streets must be built, sewers maintained, schools and hospitals built, taxes paid etc in order for you to have the advantage that you have in society today. We would not be communicating this way right now if not for american taxpayers laying the groundwork for arpanet, see - https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...t-researchers-really-did-invent-the-internet/

My only beef with you is the disrespect you show to other developers. You kick a lot of sand for no reason other than posturing, and people like that have always rubbed me the wrong way. You create toxic environments and no one likes that. Not only do people not like it, there is academic evidence that supports this behavior causes a loss of productivity.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5982074/

"As evident from the results, a toxic work environment significantly impacts the job productivity and the job burnout"

In a open source community the workplace is virtual. There are less solid boundaries to consider and your behavior has spillover effect that disincentivizes other developers from productivity. I know for a fact that some of the xecuter releases has changed the way that other developers operate, and this impact cannot and should not be trivialized by obessing over irrelvent drama. This behavior is so common it has a term - bikeshedding, which is a modern term meant to illuminate the law of triviality, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

 

[Reecey]

Gbatemp is the best site for the latest greatest homebrew, without a doubt, no questions asked! You have the best newest up and coming devs, best devs period, best members for general, best members for experience, best staff & members (the majority mostly) full stop. Trust me I have been here nearly since the get go and I have seen some of the biggest dev names in the game start off here at gbatemp, agree they go adrift but that’s just because of safety reasons and also over the years I’ve had the honour of talking/mixing with these very talented devs, it’s just something that’s priceless in my opinion!

Edit: no offence @garyopa I’m sure your sites rocks as well but I like to stay faithful.

 

[LucasM3]

Xbins has been around for a while since the days of the original XBOX release. GBAtemp is now a better source of news. Avoid Maxconsole they advertise shady gambling sites.

 

[cots]

As far as im aware, there is only a single application (sx installer) that does not exist on xbins and that is due to the fact that its commercial software for a licensed product, and hosting it serves no purpose. If you wish to purchase applications associated with your product you should purchase them from the manufacturer/distributor of that licensed content, unless you are suggesting that I should host the cracked version of the software?

Was there another application not hosted on xbins? I've chosen not to host xecuter CFW's for the same reason as listed above. You want support for the product you purchased? Get it from the people who sold it to you. xbins does not exist for commercial purposes, it exists solely to support the community. I will very happily host all xecuter products the moment they decide to give it for free to the community.

The only other application that I've ever decided to not host was that freeshop nonsense for very obvious reasons. I will not judge people who wish to hack/crack and make the best of their consoles, regardless of their moral position on piracy, but I absolutely will not host software whose sole purpose is to pirate games.

If you think that I have some personal vendetta against you, you are incorrect. I currently host some of your other repositories (incognito off the top of my mind) so you cannot claim that I've chosen to single you out. I think you're a talented individual who does good work, and there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of the infrastructure that was built before you, as long as you acknowledge the work that those people did who laid the foundation for you to exist. Streets must be built, sewers maintained, schools and hospitals built, taxes paid etc in order for you to have the advantage that you have in society today. We would not be communicating this way right now if not for american taxpayers laying the groundwork for arpanet, see - https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...t-researchers-really-did-invent-the-internet/

My only beef with you is the disrespect you show to other developers. You kick a lot of sand for no reason other than posturing, and people like that have always rubbed me the wrong way. You create toxic environments and no one likes that. Not only do people not like it, there is academic evidence that supports this behavior causes a loss of productivity.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5982074/

"As evident from the results, a toxic work environment significantly impacts the job productivity and the job burnout"

In a open source community the workplace is virtual. There are less solid boundaries to consider and your behavior has spillover effect that disincentivizes other developers from productivity. I know for a fact that some of the xecuter releases has changed the way that other developers operate, and this impact cannot and should not be trivialized by obessing over irrelvent drama. This behavior is so common it has a term - bikeshedding, which is a modern term meant to illuminate the law of triviality, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

Not indexing SXOS realeases is fine and all, but how do you explain how you used to index Xecuter X3 BIOS, which was closed source, DRM restricted BIOS for a commercial product. Surely if you've changed your position on commercial products you should remove the hundreds of listings for them from your indexing page?

Was this what you were referring to @blawar or was it something else?

 

[blawar]

As far as im aware, there is only a single application (sx installer) that does not exist on xbins and that is due to the fact that its commercial software for a licensed product, and hosting it serves no purpose. If you wish to purchase applications associated with your product you should purchase them from the manufacturer/distributor of that licensed content, unless you are suggesting that I should host the cracked version of the software?

Was there another application not hosted on xbins? I've chosen not to host xecuter CFW's for the same reason as listed above. You want support for the product you purchased? Get it from the people who sold it to you. xbins does not exist for commercial purposes, it exists solely to support the community. I will very happily host all xecuter products the moment they decide to give it for free to the community.

The only other application that I've ever decided to not host was that freeshop nonsense for very obvious reasons. I will not judge people who wish to hack/crack and make the best of their consoles, regardless of their moral position on piracy, but I absolutely will not host software whose sole purpose is to pirate games.

If you think that I have some personal vendetta against you, you are incorrect. I currently host some of your other repositories (incognito off the top of my mind) so you cannot claim that I've chosen to single you out. I think you're a talented individual who does good work, and there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of the infrastructure that was built before you, as long as you acknowledge the work that those people did who laid the foundation for you to exist. Streets must be built, sewers maintained, schools and hospitals built, taxes paid etc in order for you to have the advantage that you have in society today. We would not be communicating this way right now if not for american taxpayers laying the groundwork for arpanet, see - https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...t-researchers-really-did-invent-the-internet/

My only beef with you is the disrespect you show to other developers. You kick a lot of sand for no reason other than posturing, and people like that have always rubbed me the wrong way. You create toxic environments and no one likes that. Not only do people not like it, there is academic evidence that supports this behavior causes a loss of productivity.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5982074/

"As evident from the results, a toxic work environment significantly impacts the job productivity and the job burnout"

In a open source community the workplace is virtual. There are less solid boundaries to consider and your behavior has spillover effect that disincentivizes other developers from productivity. I know for a fact that some of the xecuter releases has changed the way that other developers operate, and this impact cannot and should not be trivialized by obessing over irrelvent drama. This behavior is so common it has a term - bikeshedding, which is a modern term meant to illuminate the law of triviality, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

The SX apps were part of what I was speaking about before. However you have hosted closed source commercial software before, yet you chose not to with SX.

You do host incognito, probably because it is open source, yet you do not host Tinfoil or Lithium which are closed source and non-commercial, and the best home brew in the scene.

You are free to list whatever software you want, I do not fault you for not listing these applications. However I am also free to criticize the list for being non-comprehensive, political, and lacking the best homebrew in the scene.

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

Not indexing SXOS realeases is fine and all, but how do you explain how you used to index Xecuter X3 BIOS, which was closed source, DRM restricted BIOS for a commercial product. Surely if you've changed your position on commercial products you should remove the hundreds of listings for them from your indexing page?

Was this what you were referring to @blawar or was it something else?

That is part of it, the other parts were apps like SX Dumper, SX Installer, Tinfoil, and Lithium which are the best homebrew apps in the scene. And SX OS is clearly the best CFW for the average user, yet it is also left off of the list.

xbins is not alone though, the "homebrew app store" also pulls similar political garbage. The homebrew actually changed their rules to only allow open source applications after the tinfoil drama. It was interesting that Tinfoil was the only real causality of that rule change.

People always eem to accuse me of being toxic, yet they do not recognize that the real toxic behavior that divides the community is stuff like homebrew app store and xbins delisting apps over political reasons, or Kosmos banning discussions of certain apps because they don't something the developer said. @iriez accuses me of being toxic for things I said, yet homebrew app store and xbins are toxic for things they actually do, which is worse for the community?

And what have they gotten for their efforts? Tinfoil is still the best homebrew in the scene, and SX OS is still the best CFW. A year of toxicity has gotten them no where. I just keep doing what I am doing, progressing the scene, and others keep complaining about mean things I said a year ago.

 

[hippy dave]

If everybody says you are the problem, then maybe...

Btw, making out that you are somehow the wounded party and everyone else is actually to blame is well documented to be toxic person behaviour 101.

 

[linuxares]

Xbins is fine to mention and talk about. He got the OK approval.

However Xbins isn't maybe the best place to get homebrew news, but it's pretty much the best archive for homebrew there is. They been around since like forever!

 

[Clydefrosch]

and SX OS is still the best CFW. A year of toxicity has gotten them no where. I just keep doing what I am doing, progressing the scene, and others keep complaining about mean things I said a year ago.

 

[iriez]

Not indexing SXOS realeases is fine and all, but how do you explain how you used to index Xecuter X3 BIOS, which was closed source, DRM restricted BIOS for a commercial product. Surely if you've changed your position on commercial products you should remove the hundreds of listings for them from your indexing page?

Was this what you were referring to @blawar or was it something else?

First, sorry for the late reply, I've been out traveling for a bit and im just now coming back to this.

To answer you directly and succinctly, those old xecuter products that we still host are not commercial, but were given for free to the community. It has nothing to do with closed vs open source, it has to do with products that are sold and can only be obtained for a cost vs free, as well as products that clearly violate licenses and are flippant about it. But see more about this below.

The original xecuter (the person) was a guy who went by the name Paul. Paul was a super cool dude. Was really innovative in that he saw a need and hired a lot of talent to make that need into a market. Paul sold xecuter to the guy (max) who runs it now who has been caught in quite a few scandals of unethical nature (e.g. brick code, cloning other projects, etc).

The orignal xecuter was innovative in that they created their own product and improved it extensively without taking from others. Everything they did, they did in house. From the design of the hardware to the reverse engineering of the console security. The original software and hardware guys at xecuter were very talented and did their own work. No work of that nature existed prior to their products.

So there's several points of context here to answer your inquiry, which is fair. I can see how someone from a outside perspective would think him being a hypocrite. I hate hypocrites and I wouldn't want to ever be one.

The original xecuter bios's were based on their own work. It was not stolen without attribution from others, because there were no others. In fact, its the opposite...there were several companies who cloned xecuter products and used their software. I was never supportive of those companies, just like today im not supportive of the new xecuter because of their clear violation of licensing of really taleneted individuals who give to the community for free. So im being perfectly consistent in my morals then as I am now.

The cool part about xecuter is they did a lot of community building projects and gave a ton of stuff away for free. Not only hardware, but software. You did not need a xecuter product in order to use a xecuter bios. So if you look back through xbins history, you will see xecuter products released through xbins for free to the community. I have personally handed/shipped a couple thousand dollars worth of xecuter products for the xbox/xbox360, given to xbins for the free support we offered the community. I saw them give away plenty of others stuff outside of xbins as well. Paul was a very generous person and he saw how the community worked. You have to understand these were very different times. DSL was the norm in those days, 56k only recently phased out, AIM was fresh and exicting still, technology was still evolving into the beast it is today. So it was a very tight knit community, with only a few individuals offering real infrastructure for the community.

People didn't just spend $5 for a dedicated host back then. You had to actually know what the fuck you were doing, and everything was expensive. I think it was around $350 a month, and that was through a friend who had his own ISP. It wasn't a amazon AWS where you can click a few buttons, streamline a full OS install with pre configured specifications towards whatever project you want to specialize in. So not very many people were willing to put the time, effort and money to support the scene. I was the first host for the xbox community. And continue to host today the same way as always. Paul saw this, knew that I was creating a lot of debt for myself, and did anything he could to help. He got me connected with several sponsors over the space of 10 years that helped me pay some of the bills. He even made contributions himself. The guy was freaking loaded, he didn't really need more money, he just saw where help was needed and he did it.

Thats nothing like today. Today its 100% about the money and ethics/morals can go fuck themselves. I have always, and will always, fight against poisonous greed and corruption. Stealing others work and claiming it as your own has real measurable empirical effects upon economies and markets, and they are mostly bad. We have definitive proof that xecuter has used atmospheres code for their CFW. Easter eggs were hidden (and found in xecuters products). You cannot deny this, its as straight forward as it can be, no disillusion or confusion. xbins and gbatemp are both consistent in this policy...we both recognize that xecuter is violating licensing and cannot be hosted, which is why you wont find their software on this site or xbins.

And to verify my lack of hypocrisy....I actually ended up breaking my relationship with xecuter towards the end of the xbox360 days because they started getting greedy and decided to go against the community. So the fact that I used to support xecuter and now do not support the new xecuter is nothing new. I did it more than 10 years ago when it was still ran by Paul. Keep in mind this is just me talking about my personal opinoin/position, and has nothing to do with xbins. You can read that lengthy drama here -

https://gbatemp.net/threads/a-memoir-team-hyperx-liteon-encryption.194333/

The SX apps were part of what I was speaking about before. However you have hosted closed source commercial software before, yet you chose not to with SX.

You do host incognito, probably because it is open source, yet you do not host Tinfoil or Lithium which are closed source and non-commercial, and the best home brew in the scene.

You are free to list whatever software you want, I do not fault you for not listing these applications. However I am also free to criticize the list for being non-comprehensive, political, and lacking the best homebrew in the scene.

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

That is part of it, the other parts were apps like SX Dumper, SX Installer, Tinfoil, and Lithium which are the best homebrew apps in the scene. And SX OS is clearly the best CFW for the average user, yet it is also left off of the list.

xbins is not alone though, the "homebrew app store" also pulls similar political garbage. The homebrew actually changed their rules to only allow open source applications after the tinfoil drama. It was interesting that Tinfoil was the only real causality of that rule change.

People always eem to accuse me of being toxic, yet they do not recognize that the real toxic behavior that divides the community is stuff like homebrew app store and xbins delisting apps over political reasons, or Kosmos banning discussions of certain apps because they don't something the developer said. @iriez accuses me of being toxic for things I said, yet homebrew app store and xbins are toxic for things they actually do, which is worse for the community?

And what have they gotten for their efforts? Tinfoil is still the best homebrew in the scene, and SX OS is still the best CFW. A year of toxicity has gotten them no where. I just keep doing what I am doing, progressing the scene, and others keep complaining about mean things I said a year ago.

Drama buried.

Edit- I have added your files for hosting as well as to our repo monitoring tool, so your Lithium releases will be auto-posted going forward. Take this as a show of good faith and try to do the same towards me.

 

[cots]

First, sorry for the late reply, I've been out traveling for a bit and im just now coming back to this.

To answer you directly and succinctly, those old xecuter products that we still host are not commercial, but were given for free to the community. It has nothing to do with closed vs open source, it has to do with products that are sold and can only be obtained for a cost vs free, as well as products that clearly violate licenses and are flippant about it. But see more about this below.

The original xecuter (the person) was a guy who went by the name Paul. Paul was a super cool dude. Was really innovative in that he saw a need and hired a lot of talent to make that need into a market. Paul sold xecuter to the guy (max) who runs it now who has been caught in quite a few scandals of unethical nature (e.g. brick code, cloning other projects, etc).

The orignal xecuter was innovative in that they created their own product and improved it extensively without taking from others. Everything they did, they did in house. From the design of the hardware to the reverse engineering of the console security. The original software and hardware guys at xecuter were very talented and did their own work. No work of that nature existed prior to their products.

So there's several points of context here to answer your inquiry, which is fair. I can see how someone from a outside perspective would think him being a hypocrite. I hate hypocrites and I wouldn't want to ever be one.

The original xecuter bios's were based on their own work. It was not stolen without attribution from others, because there were no others. In fact, its the opposite...there were several companies who cloned xecuter products and used their software. I was never supportive of those companies, just like today im not supportive of the new xecuter because of their clear violation of licensing of really taleneted individuals who give to the community for free. So im being perfectly consistent in my morals then as I am now.

The cool part about xecuter is they did a lot of community building projects and gave a ton of stuff away for free. Not only hardware, but software. You did not need a xecuter product in order to use a xecuter bios. So if you look back through xbins history, you will see xecuter products released through xbins for free to the community. I have personally handed/shipped a couple thousand dollars worth of xecuter products for the xbox/xbox360, given to xbins for the free support we offered the community. I saw them give away plenty of others stuff outside of xbins as well. Paul was a very generous person and he saw how the community worked. You have to understand these were very different times. DSL was the norm in those days, 56k only recently phased out, AIM was fresh and exicting still, technology was still evolving into the beast it is today. So it was a very tight knit community, with only a few individuals offering real infrastructure for the community.

People didn't just spend $5 for a dedicated host back then. You had to actually know what the fuck you were doing, and everything was expensive. It wasn't a amazon AWS where you can click a few buttons, streamline a full OS install with pre configured specifications towards whatever project you want to specialize in. So not very many people were willing to put the time, effort and money to support the scene. I was the first host for the xbox community. And continue to host today the same way as always. Paul saw this, knew that I was creating a lot of debt for myself, and did anything he could to help. He got me connected with several sponsors over the space of 10 years that helped me pay some of the bills. He even made contributions himself. The guy was freaking loaded, he didn't really need more money, he just saw where help was needed and he did it.

Thats nothing like today. Today its 100% about the money and ethics/morals can go fuck themselves. I have always, and will always, fight against poisonous greed and corruption. Stealing others work and claiming it as your own has real measurable empirical effects upon economies and markets, and they are mostly bad. We have definitive proof that xecuter has used atmospheres code for their CFW. Easter eggs were hidden (and found in xecuters products). You cannot deny this, its as straight forward as it can be, no disillusion or confusion. xbins and gbatemp are both consistent in this policy...we both recognize that xecuter is violating licensing and cannot be hosted, which is why you wont find their software on this site or xbins.

And to verify my lack of hypocrisy....I actually ended up breaking my relationship with xecuter towards the end of the xbox360 days because they started getting greedy and decided to go against the community. So the fact that I used to support xecuter and now do not support the new xecuter is nothing new. I did it more than 10 years ago when it was still ran by Paul. Keep in mind this is just me talking about my personal opinoin/position, and has nothing to do with xbins. You can read that lengthy drama here -

https://gbatemp.net/threads/a-memoir-team-hyperx-liteon-encryption.194333/

Drama buried.

Edit- I have added your files for hosting as well as to our repo monitoring tool, so your Lithium releases will be auto-posted going forward. Take this as a show of good faith and try to do the same towards me.

No worries on the late reply. I wasn't going anywhere. The thing is that, for example, the Xecuter 3 xbox modchip was a commercial product that costs money that wasn't shipped with the BIOS for legal purposes. The BIOS had to be cracked by 3rd party tools to work on other modchips as it had DRM built into it to only function using the X3 chip. This is just one example. I know, I've installed plenty of X3's - they are great chips! I've also been around before xbox-scene.com started (along with Xecuter) and have had dealings with its previous owner.

I see your point in not hosting SX OS as it's your website and you can do whatever you want with it, but the original Xecuter Team did have their fare share of their own drama and their products were commercial and did cost money - that's all I was trying to ask about. You basically cleared things up for me, so thank you for taking the time to do that. I've also decided not to host commercial homebrew and/or homebrew specifically designed and advertised with shitloads of screen shots of commercial games (that includes blawar's tinfoil and the SX OS installer). So to say I'm not bias to some extent would by a lie.

Personally, I don't want anything to do with people who are stealing code or stealing games and not giving credit were credit is due, but I also find it a bit odd that people who are mainly pirating games which is violating licenses and copyrights (possibly laws too, depending where you're located) are attacking Xecuter when they are doing just about the same type of stuff. If you're going to jump on the let's hate SX OS bandwagon and you're using Atmosphere to play pirated games with you're just as bad as they are, if not worse.

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

 

[iriez]

No worries on the late reply. I wasn't going anywhere. The thing is that, for example, the Xecuter 3 xbox modchip was a commercial product that costs money that wasn't shipped with the BIOS for legal purposes. The BIOS had to be cracked by 3rd party tools to work on other modchips as it had DRM built into it to only function using the X3 chip. This is just one example. I know, I've installed plenty of X3's - they are great chips! I've also been around before xbox-scene.com started (along with Xecuter) and have had dealings with its previous owner.

I see your point in not hosting SX OS as it's your website and you can do whatever you want with it, but the original Xecuter Team did have their fare share of their own drama and their products were commercial and did cost money - that's all I was trying to ask about. You basically cleared things up for me, so thank you for taking the time to do that. I've also decided not to host commercial homebrew and/or homebrew specifically designed and advertised with shitloads of screen shots of commercial games (that includes blawar's tinfoil and the SX OS installer). So to say I'm not bias to some extent would by a lie.

The X3 bioses were used on xbox TSOP's 1.0-1.5. So they were always released for free to the public. This is really the main point - it was a opt-in situation. You were given the choice to do what you wanted and they didn't force you to purchase their products. If you wanted to tsop flash for free, they saw no issue with it and were happy to support the public. So thats why xbins hosts those files...because they were distributed for free and anyone could use them

I do understand that they sold commercial products, but we never hosted software (that I can think of) that was associated with commercial product usage where you had to buy the product in order to use the software. Honestly I can't even think of a software from xecuter that meets that criteria? AFAIK everything was released for free if it was software.

I recognize the nick, but I don't recall what your site/service was? Let me know

Personally, I don't want anything to do with people who are stealing code or stealing games and not giving credit were credit is due, but I also find it a bit odd that people who are mainly pirating games which is violating licenses and copyrights (possibly laws too, depending where you're located) are attacking Xecuter when they are doing just about the same type of stuff. If you're going to jump on the let's hate SX OS bandwagon and you're using Atmosphere to play pirated games with you're just as bad as they are, if not worse.

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/22/eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact/

This is personally why im not against piracy. The argument has always been that piracy hurts companies, sales, economies, etc. Except what academic research we have on the subject proves thats not true. I've known this most of my life because I personally saw how much hardware (and software, accessories, etc) was purchased due to consoles being exploited and opened up for greater purposes.

The utility of a product is what makes a product viable. The more utility, often the more sales this product will have. This is a non-controversial opinion that is well founded in economic theory and applys to all financial vehicles as well. No one can deny that massive utility was created through modifying xboxes and any console beyond that had the hardware strong enough to play media and emulate. This created a larger market than what would have been possible with a walled-garden commercial product.

I have a lot of friends who are developers for both indie and major studios. They all mostly pirate games lol. Some of the best xbox hackers that made software were software engineers for major companies! I can name at least 3-4 off the top of my head and there are a ton more that I've probably forgotten about.

So as you can see, its not a very clear-cut situation. There is a lot of information to consider, and I find this perspective quite compelling. So even if you don't agree, perhaps now you can see that its not unreasonable to have a contrasting opinion on this subject.

Also, I have no problems with xecuter creating hardware to modify consoles, even if it means piracy. Im not convinced this hurts companies, so I don't see the moral conundrum that others do on the subject. To me its a form of class warefare, except directed towards consumers. I don't care if someone's poor, I want them to be able to enjoy things that other people do that they can't have because of the genetics lottery. Its important to have empathy for humanity and remember that most people don't live in 1st world countries. The America's, Europe and Asia supply more than enough revenue to billion dollar multi-national corporations, and im really not shedding tears over a 0.01% margin loss =)