3 ms·

We're entering an age where doing binary modification on live binaries is not a huge deal. Everything is now open "source"?

debugnik 2mo ago
I would move the quotes to "open" since the issue of licensing is still left. Although LLM providers have shown that they don't care about copyright so it should go both ways.
- jaggederest 2mo ago
  Quotes for all of it, it's a closed binary that is transparently user modifiable these days I guess, so "open" "source".
simpaticoder 2mo ago
What is it called when there's a process that's available to individuals but is long and onerous and cannot be shared among them? Saying the binaries are open source now means that the work of reverse engineering will be repeated exactly in proportion to the number of times it's modified. I would argue on a large scale this is still effectively closed source.
- jaggederest 2mo ago
  As soon as you can share binary patches (highly illegal of course) we're off to the races.
  - fc417fc802 2mo ago
    More like mildly illegal. Seems on par with torrents to me.
  - shepherdjerred 2mo ago
    Binary patches aren’t illegal right? How would they be?
    - jaggederest 2mo ago
      CFAA and friends (in the US, at least) means that even things you might not otherwise expect are illegal get turned into super illegal. Binary patches are probably fine to make, but to distribute them for other people's binaries is probably not.
    - silver_sun 2mo ago
      I'm not a lawyer. But I think if your "binary patch" is a series of instructions to write specific code to specific locations in a binary file, and the patch itself doesn't include any of the code present in the original binary, making/distributing a binary patch can't possibly be copyright infringement. It's normal in the videogame ROM hacking community to distribute this kind of binary patches (known as IPS patches) so as to avoid legal trouble, since the binary patch is useless if the user doesn't have access to the original videogame ROM. Distributing the ROM or even its patched version would be illegal, but a patch of the kind I mentioned is fine.
      - shepherdjerred 2mo ago
        That’s my understanding too, and it’s essentially how modded Minecraft servers work

debugnik 2mo ago

I would move the quotes to "open" since the issue of licensing is still left. Although LLM providers have shown that they don't care about copyright so it should go both ways.

jaggederest 2mo ago
Quotes for all of it, it's a closed binary that is transparently user modifiable these days I guess, so "open" "source".

simpaticoder 2mo ago

What is it called when there's a process that's available to individuals but is long and onerous and cannot be shared among them? Saying the binaries are open source now means that the work of reverse engineering will be repeated exactly in proportion to the number of times it's modified. I would argue on a large scale this is still effectively closed source.

jaggederest 2mo ago
As soon as you can share binary patches (highly illegal of course) we're off to the races.
- fc417fc802 2mo ago
  More like mildly illegal. Seems on par with torrents to me.
- shepherdjerred 2mo ago
  Binary patches aren’t illegal right? How would they be?
  - jaggederest 2mo ago
    CFAA and friends (in the US, at least) means that even things you might not otherwise expect are illegal get turned into super illegal. Binary patches are probably fine to make, but to distribute them for other people's binaries is probably not.
  - silver_sun 2mo ago
    I'm not a lawyer. But I think if your "binary patch" is a series of instructions to write specific code to specific locations in a binary file, and the patch itself doesn't include any of the code present in the original binary, making/distributing a binary patch can't possibly be copyright infringement. It's normal in the videogame ROM hacking community to distribute this kind of binary patches (known as IPS patches) so as to avoid legal trouble, since the binary patch is useless if the user doesn't have access to the original videogame ROM. Distributing the ROM or even its patched version would be illegal, but a patch of the kind I mentioned is fine.
    - shepherdjerred 2mo ago
      That’s my understanding too, and it’s essentially how modded Minecraft servers work