[cycloptic]

I don't support this action from the leakers but clearly there is a large amount of interest in this information.

Now would be the time for Nintendo to seriously consider open sourcing some of this stuff so they have a chance to put it out there legally and in a way that benefits them, instead of the current situation where it only benefits shady outfits selling aftermarket raspberry pis loaded with illegal ROMs, that were never going to partner with them anyway.

[tinus_hn]

Chances are Nintendo licensed these designs from a third party and isn’t in a position to give them away.

[coldpie]

Yes. Silicon Graphics was heavily involved in the hardware design of the N64. Even if Nintendo wanted to allow everything in the leaks to be public, they don't have the rights to.

[cycloptic]

This is not an excuse. They can start with the parts they do have access to, while the community can work on (legally) getting the other information from the relevant rightsholders at SGI.

[Timpy]

Bryan Cantrill gave a talk that included how difficult it was to take something that wasn't originally intended to be open source and then open source it. I think it was something at Sun before they were acquired by Oracle (iirc Cantrill laments how Oracle effectively un-open-sourced the project). I've watched hours of Cantrill on youtube, I'm having trouble finding which video it was. I can't explain it myself but I remember my takeaway was "wow that's a lot more complicated than I thought."

Edit: Child comment has the video. Starting at 20:17, "We wanted to open source the system. So why didn't we? What was the problem? Well, the problem was that it's a deeply proprietary system."

[joeyaiello]

I'm a PM at Microsoft that worked on open-sourcing PowerShell. As Windows PowerShell, it's a built-in Windows component, and the number of assumptions that could be made because it was both closed-source and part of the OS were immense. Even getting it to build outside of the rest of the operating system was crazy hard. Then figuring out to install it in a supported way was hard, and only then did we get to start figuring out how to eliminate usage of private APIs and start doing legal reviews.

And we're "just" a language runtime and a shell shipped in the OS. I can't imagine how hard it would be to unwind the proprietary bits of something like a GPU architecture running in a tightly integrated SoC with multiple vendors who are all deeply protective of their IP.

I say this all as someone who has been a proponent of open source for 15 years. And all the work was absolutely worth it, and deeply rewarding from a personal perspective.

But I can't say it would probably make the same sense for Nintendo to go through that effort with Pokemon or the N64 architecture.

[cycloptic]

Thank you for this story, it's very inspiring. I'm sure they will find something good they can open source eventually, even if it isn't those two things.

[cycloptic]

This might be the talk you're referring to: https://invidio.us/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

I don't have time to rewatch it now but I believe the point of the talk was to promote Illumos as the true community-driven open-source fork after Oracle dropped the ball. This is exactly what I'm talking about: the community is often happy to pick up the slack and cover for the failures of these companies, but only when given the opportunity. Yes it's a lot of work, a lot of conversations and a lot of corporate politicking. But how can anyone get started when the relevant parties are not willing to even present an opportunity?

[tinus_hn]

Not to mention that a company like Nintendo has absolutely nothing to gain from all this effort.

[cycloptic]

With many companies easing into open source recently, we have seen that just isn't true. If we're still trying to spread the idea that the community is dumb and is going to ruin everything and will remove value from the product if they get access to the code, that assumption is going to be tested now regardless of what they do, and it probably will keep happening because the incentive for leakers and illegal aftermarket sellers is not going to go away. Note that I don't include them as part of this community.

[Gorbzel]

Actually, it very much is a valid reason.

The hubris of those who believe other people should be forced to release their (not already subject to a copyleft license) work is the very antithesis of FOSS principles.

[cycloptic]

You have it backwards. The situation I'm describing is the opposite, coming from the assumption that they do want to release it. The poster I was responding to was the one who originally presented this idea by suggesting that the only thing getting in their way was the SGI rightsholders (currently HPE) who are forcing them NOT to release it. This is what is preventing whatever FOSS principles from taking place.

Now if this isn't actually the case and they're just using it as an excuse because they don't want to release it, and they want to continue playing this cat-and-mouse game with leakers and ROM sites forever, that's fine too, it's a little disappointing, but my intention is to present the idea that there is a different way.

[derefr]

Not "should be forced to"; rather "the cat is out of the bag, they've already been exposed to all the downside of open-sourcing, so now there's only upside."

[zozbot234]

> Now would be the time for Nintendo to seriously consider open sourcing some of this stuff

Unfortunately, Nintendo has never done anything like this. Maybe some reputable organization like a computing museum could ask them to place this information in escrow in the Internet Archive, so that it can be released "properly" after copyrights expire and trade secrets have long become irrelevant. But there's no way they're going to do more than that.

[cycloptic]

A few years ago I would have believed this, but current Nintendo consoles include many open source components: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/oss/

If this trend continues, it would be prudent of them to find bigger and better ways to contribute back.

[ballenf]

I know what you mean and agree that companies using open source should contribute back to it.

But I also think that the contribution to society from Nintendo's products should also be valued. Just because we pay for those games, doesn't mean our lives aren't better than they would be if the company didn't exist and we spent the money on something else.

They also contribute by increasing the market competition for games. They make other games and games companies better. They encourage innovation in ways that other companies wouldn't think about or wouldn't prioritize otherwise.

I'm totally ok with companies utilizing open source to make my life better in this way. Contributing back code for others to use is also an important activity.

[cycloptic]

Just so you know where I'm coming from, I personally would not pay for those games because they're closed-source, and I would not buy from any of their market competitors either for the same reason. Admittedly I'm not much of a gamer, my idea of a fun weekend is spending it on github. So the innovation doesn't really benefit me.