Nintendo Open Source Software Source Code Distribution Page

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/oss/index.html#

by pdknsk • 12 years ago

164 37 12 years ago

nintendo.co.jp

pdknsk2• 12 years ago

There is nothing particularly interesting, most is just their customised WebKit. MK8 uses a bluetooth library, only modified to compile with MSVC. DS emulation uses Nanojit, but I couldn't figure out the snapshot they used to run a diff against.

StevenXC• 12 years ago

Does this page leak news about Nintendo DS emulation for the Wii U Virtual Console? Or is this a mistake/old news?

Kronopath2• 12 years ago

It might be DS emulation for 3DS. I'm pretty sure that DS games run under software emulation on that platform, given that you can do things like hit the "home" button to return to the 3DS's menu.

ntkachov• 12 years ago

Nope. I think its hardware emulation. The DS games run on one of the processors. I think its the processor that runs the system OS, which is why you can't just back out of a DS game into the main menu, you have to quit the game. Also the reason why you don't get street passes when you play DS games.

pdknsk2• 12 years ago

It was rather quietly announced earlier this year, during a financial results briefing.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/140130/02.htm...

mattl• 12 years ago

They released Brain Training DS in JP and EU about a month ago for the Wii U.

thekylemontag• 12 years ago

Hopefully there will be some classic nintendo backdoors in this code somewhere.

erikj• 12 years ago

There is a working exploit for the Wii U web browser: https://bitbucket.org/Marionumber1/wiiu-userspace

smtddr• 12 years ago

Indeed, and for those keeping an eye on the scene... an exploit for newest firmware 5.1.0 was just released a day ago or so. http://www.eurasia.nu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid...

Keep an eye on the work MrBean has been doing to MarioKart8 - http://www.youtube.com/user/MrBean35000vr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S4ZhmanOeM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVbZXqxIV7I

nullsoldier• 12 years ago

As someone who's still learning about licenses. Does this mean that since they waited so long to release their OSS that they've been violating the terms of the licenses they've used to ship products for years (potentially)?

ig1• 12 years ago

No, GPL only requires you to provide source-code to users on request. No general publication requirement.

fs111• 12 years ago

Yes, and those users are free to publish that code in any way they desire.

joncrocks• 12 years ago

I think you also have to provide details of the licence/licensed components alongside your distributed software, so that users know they can actually request the source-code.

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html - "And you must show them these terms so they know their rights"

jordigh• 12 years ago

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesWrittenOff...

If they were distributing the binaries without any indication that they were GPL'ed (i.e. no written offers), then yes, it would have been a violation. But it's not a violation any longer. They seem to be under compliance.

comex• 12 years ago

Keep in mind this isn't a new page; I don't know the history of each package, but at least the Wii U browser WebCore distribution has been there since Wii U release.

antanique• 12 years ago

Now, I'm not a lawyer but the Mario Kart 8 package contains code that is GPL (not LGPL) - look at the bluetooth audio codec stuff. Does this mean that Nintendo is legally bound to release the whole source code of Mario Kart 8 now? :)

The package is here: http://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/oss/data/MarioKart8_OSS1.0...

oddevan2• 12 years ago

IIRC, only if it's statically linked. If it's on the disc as two different binaries that only talk to each other through the OS at runtime, then no, MK8 isn't required to be GPL.

(It's the same principle that allowed Apple to include GCC with Xcode before LLVM came along.)

lucb1e• 12 years ago

Someone downvoted this, I assume they mean to say it's incorrect? Can they or someone else elaborate?

zbowling• 12 years ago

GPL code you CANNOT link in anyway without your code being infected by the GPL license terms, dynamically or statically. You CAN invoke tools written in GPL just not the code (unless that GPL license has something like a classpath exception).

The are also exceptions for libraries provided by OS. (Which is why you can GPL code on Windows which links a proprietary libc from Microsoft).

Apple gets away with calling GCC because it's a different application being invoked by it's natural interface in the same way that Xcode invokes git internally. (And also why people use the libgit2 project when they need to call git as a library which licensed under LGPL with the classpath exception).

Now LGPL is an entirely different story. LGPLv2 was intended that you be able to replace dynamically linked libraries in an application. The changes you made the library must be open sourced and I should be able to replace that library as a user.

In theory you satisfy the requirements of the LGPL license if you wanted to statically link though if provide the objects and archives of your code if you wanted to statically link with LGPL code, but doing this was not really well defined in the license as valid. In LGPLv3 they clarified this is totally valid and allowed.

The interesting thing is that LGPL was a license best written for C libraries at dynamical library level and breaks down in a few cases for different languages. It also breaks down where you have inlining and code getting embedded from headers that would break the ability in some cases for you to be able to change the library and relink. Implementation details of vtables, etc can get embedded too that would make it impossible to change the library.

This is why during the GNU Classplath project (to replace the Java Classpath before Java went GPL anyways), they added the "classpath exception" to GPL itself instead of using LGPL. See here for details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception

jbk• 12 years ago

Ahah, maybe :)

However, the SBC codec library is LGPL, not GPL-only. Notice COPYING.LIB along the COPYING!

Just the main sbcdec and sbcenc are pure GPL, and they are not very long files, so it's likely they rewrote those parts.

Nintendo Open Source Software Source Code Distribution Page

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