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JohnnyDude
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Advice on 3DO Emulator
« on: November 18, 2007, 10:03:55 pm »

Hi there.

We're attempting to start an open-source 3DO emulator. I've gotten only a couple people on board, and someone suggested to me that I ask the Ur-Quan Masters development team for help. It was suggested that the early stages of this project probably including disassembling 3do code. Is this true?

I would like to know if there's any interest in helping on this effort! 3DO is very complicated.

Also, I apologize for doing the typical register-then-post-new-thread newbie act. But I did honestly search the forums for this information beforehand!

--Johnny
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Defender
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Re: Advice on 3DO Emulator
« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2007, 07:02:08 am »

Why not contribute to an aready exsisting 3DO Emulater...Freedo
Just a suggestion.
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Novus
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Re: Advice on 3DO Emulator
« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2007, 03:14:57 pm »

There is a section of the FreeDO FAQ that is especially relevant to you:

Quote from: FreeDO FAQ
Q. What happened to the Open-Source FreeDO Project, located at http://freedo.sourceforge.net?
A. While I (awright69) would have liked to have kept the project open, I was shown by felixl that we couldn't legally do this. The 3DO architecture is very well isolated by cryptographic protections in hardware and software, and also by patents and IP laws which prevent the public disclose of much of its inner workings, and revealing those would have left the project far too open to legal action. While it can be argued that the 3DO or its technologies are outdated, patent and IP law simply does not allow for that.  (Thanks to ewhac for pointing that out. You’re right, I was naïve.) If someone wants to find a way to do this without stepping on anyone's legal toes, please go ahead. The FreeDO open-source page will remain only as a marker for historical purposes, with a link to the closed source page, and no code or methods from the 3DO or this project was ever, or will ever be, hosted there.

You may want to ask the FreeDO devs to re-examine their source release stance; the relevant patents may have expired in the time since they went closed source. If there are still relevant patents and your interest is primarily is being open source unlike FreeDO, you may have a problem.
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meep-eep
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Re: Advice on 3DO Emulator
« Reply #3 on: November 19, 2007, 07:05:41 pm »

That argument is severly flawed.
First, it talks about  "patent and IP law". There is no global law. And even though the Berne Convention standardises much of copyright among participating countries, implementations differ a lot. And there's no such thing as "IP law". It is a term taking together different kinds of laws, of which patent law is one.
 
Second, copyright laws should not prevent reverse engineering and reimplementation. And even the DMCA allows reverse engineering and cracking of cryptographic protections for the purposes of creating an interoperable product. Not that it matters, as the main authors of FreeDo are in Russia and Israel.

Third, patent law does not prevent publication. In fact, publication is an intrinsic part of the concept of patents (temporary protection in exchange for publication). Making an emulator might violate patents, but there's no difference between closed and open source in this respect. Though it is possible that the FreeDO people made a deal with 3DO to allow use of their patented technology in exchange for not releasing the source code.
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Re: Advice on 3DO Emulator
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2007, 05:11:11 pm »

Hey guys, thanks for the suggestions and advice. I'm having a heck of a time getting support on this.

Quote
Why not contribute to an aready exsisting 3DO Emulater...Freedo
Well, I've explained my reasoning in detail in other forum, but my main problem is that its not open source. I'm a bit concerned that there's an interest in profit with this project.

I've been attempting to contact all of the FreeDO team. I've gotten in contact with one of them, but I haven't gotten a response from the others, and I'm starting to think that any of the project leaders will be uninterested, as I'm potentially releasing a "competing" project.

All of meep-ep's skepticisms are warranted. My thinking is that open-source vs non-open-source makes no difference in the legality of the project. I figure that this emulation project is illegal on paper regardless of how its approached.  But as long as it's not for profit and I remain essentially anonymous, it doesn't really matter.

The SourceForge page is up, so refer to here in the future if you're interested. Again, thanks for the help.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/fourdo
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JohnnyDude
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Re: Advice on 3DO Emulator
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2007, 08:57:19 pm »

My rank on the forum is "Zebranky Food", huh? Bah. I'm no Spathi coward.

By the way, the starbase commander claims to have 2000 "warm bodies" on the starbase, but I've put this to the test, and sold several thousand crew members to the Druuge without running out.
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Zeracles
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Re: Advice on 3DO Emulator
« Reply #6 on: November 22, 2007, 05:10:44 am »

Quote
By the way, the starbase commander claims to have 2000 "warm bodies" on the starbase, but I've put this to the test, and sold several thousand crew members to the Druuge without running out.
Just to say that this and other very nice facts can be found here Smiley
« Last Edit: November 22, 2007, 05:19:40 am by Zeracles » Logged

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