zlacker

It would be "source available", if anything, not "open source".

> An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified or shared (with or without modification) under defined terms and conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

Companies have been really abusing what open source means- claiming something is "open source" cause they share the code and then having a license that says you can't use any part of it in any way.

Similarly if you ever use that software or depending on where you downloaded it from, you might have agreed not to decompile or read the source code. Using that code is a gamble.

>>jasonj+(OP)
But clean room reverse engineered code can have its own license, no?

>>sa1+v
Yeah, I think it can. I'm reminded of the thing in the 80s when Compaq reverse engineered and reimplemented the IBM BIOS by having one team decompile it and write a spec which they handed to a separate team who built a new implementation based on the spec.

I expect that for games the more important piece will be the art assets - like how the Quake game engine was open source but you still needed to buy a copy of the game in order to use the textures.

>>jasonj+(OP)
But, for example, isn't Cannonball (SEGA Outrun source port) open source?

https://github.com/djyt/cannonball

>>jasonj+(OP)
Open source never meant free to begin with and was never software specific, that’s a colloquialism and I’d love to say “language evolves” in favor of the software community’s use but open source is used in other still similar contexts, specifically legal and public policy ones

FOSS specifically means/meant free and open source software, the free and software words are there for a reason

so we don’t need another distinction like “source available” that people need to understand to convey an already shared concept

yes, companies abuse their community’s interest in something by blending open source legal term as a marketing term

>>DrNosf+5b
No it is not. There is no license in that repository.

Relevant: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/82431

> When you make a creative work (which includes code), the work is under exclusive copyright by default. Unless you include a license that specifies otherwise, nobody else can copy, distribute, or modify your work without being at risk of take-downs, shake-downs, or litigation. Once the work has other contributors (each a copyright holder), “nobody” starts including you.

https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/

>>yieldc+Be
Whether or not something is "free" is a separate matter and subject to how the software is licensed. If there is no license it is, by definition "source available", not open source. "source available" is not some new distinction I'm making up.

See my other comment: >>46175760

>>sa1+v
In fact, the story of how Atari tried to circumvent the lockout chip on the original NES is a good example of this.

They had gotten surprisingly close to a complete decompilation, but then they tried to request a copy of the source code from the copyright office citing that they needed it as a result of ongoing unrelated litigation with Nintendo.

Later on this killed them in court.

>>jasonj+(OP)
So instead of reverse engineering.. an llm/agent/whatever could simply produce custom apps for everyone, simply implementing the features an individual might want. A more viable path?

>>yieldc+Be
This is not a space for "language evolves". Open source has very specific definitions and the distinctions there matter for legal purposes https://opensource.org/licenses

>>virapt+xq
the software community is the one trying to evolve the language in favor of this software license specific use case

>>sa1+v
If we're talking about actual clean-room reverse engineering where only the overall design or spec is copied and not the specific code, then yes. In this process, one person would decompile the original and turn it into a human-readable spec, and another person would write their own implementation. But the decompiled code itself is never distributed.

That's very different from the decompilation projects being discussed here, which do distribute the decompiled code.

These decompilation projects do involve some creative choices, which means that the decompilation would likely be considered a derivative work, containing copyrightable elements from both the authors of the original binary and the authors of the decompilation project. This is similar to a human translation of a literary work. A derivative work does have its own copyright, but distributing a derivative work requires permission from the copyright holders of both the original and the derivative. So a decompilation project technically can set their own license, and thereby add additional restrictions, but they can't overwrite the original license. If there is no original license, the default is that you can't distribute at all.

>>jasonj+Mf
There is a license: https://github.com/djyt/cannonball/blob/master/docs/license....

...but it's very clearly not an open source license.