Copyright status of binaries in dolphin (for debian)

10-24-2014, 07:27 PM #1

I had a look at the Debian bug filed to package dolphin (https://bugs.debian.org/535073).
Most of the stuff in dolphin looks ok for debian apart from these binaries:

* Data/Sys/GC/font_ansi.bin
* Data/Sys/GC/font_sjis.bin
* Data/Sys/Wii/shared2/sys/SYSCONF
* Data/Sys/Wii/shared2/wc24/*
* Data/Sys/totaldb.dsy

Where are they from?
Are they freely (+ legally) distributable?
Do they have any source code / how did you generate them?
Will dolphin still work if I remove them?

Thanks,
James

***Shonumi*** · (This post was last modified: 10-24-2014, 11:39 PM by Shonumi.)

All of this files are part of Dolphin; check out the Git repository and you'll see Dolphin has the same binaries there. There should be no copyright issues with having Debian (or anyone else) include them in a package, so long as Dolphin's license is followed, i.e. any changes need to be documented and made available for others to apply. Afaik, they were reverse engineered; any copyrighted code (BIOS, NAND, DSP ROM) must be provided by the users themselves.

10-25-2014, 12:17 AM #3

(10-24-2014, 11:38 PM)Shonumi Wrote: All of this files are part of Dolphin; check out the Git repository and you'll see Dolphin has the same binaries there. There should be no copyright issues with having Debian (or anyone else) include them in a package, so long as Dolphin's license is followed, i.e. any changes need to be documented and made available for others to apply. Afaik, they were reverse engineered; any copyrighted code (BIOS, NAND, DSP ROM) must be provided by the users themselves.

I think reverse engineering is ok, I was just worried that some of these files were directly copied from a Wii. However if you're distributing these binaries under Dolphin's GPL license, you need to provide the source code for them as well. For files created with a hex editor or any image program (for example), the binary is the source itself. For some of the larger files though, I'm fairly certain you didn't created them with a hex editor - they must have been generated by something.

**neobrain** · (This post was last modified: 10-25-2014, 12:40 AM by neobrain.)

@jcowgill: The truth is most of us have no idea where those files come from, and there's a decent chance these files are indeed directly copied from a Wii. If you really want to know you should maybe try contacting ector and bugging him about it.

10-25-2014, 07:05 AM #5

Data/Sys/GC/font_*.bin: These are needed for some games. No idea where they came from.

Data/Sys/Wii/shared2/sys/SYSCONF has been documented and can be auto-generated.

Data/Sys/Wii/shared2/wc24/* are WiiConnect24-related files. No idea if they're needed for regular games.

Data/Sys/totaldb.dsy contains debug information in a custom format. The strings were extracted from debug files found in some games. The file is only used by Dolphin's integrated debugger and nothing bad happens when the file isn't there.

EDIT:
If you are concerned about symbol files, there's also Data/Sys/Maps/*.

10-25-2014, 09:26 PM #6

Thanks flacs. I think in that case SYSCONF and totaldb.dsy should be OK.

My main concern is that some of the other files were taken from a console which would make them illegal to distribute.

I looked at the wc24 files again and they seem to be mostly filled with nulls and the format of the larger file is on the wiki as well. It's similar to the other files but I'm not completely sure it's OK (eg copied from a wii). I think I'll probably just include the files and see if the package gets rejected or not.

The font files still need looking at - I'll see if I can unpack them.

***Shonumi*** · 10-26-2014, 01:08 AM #7

Judging from Dolphin's code, if they are from the console itself, it would probably be from the IPL (or the BIOS as others would call it). It might be font dumps from the IPL, in which case you could simply do a binary search inside the IPL files for matching data. In that case, you could simply recreate the font dumps yourself with your own legally dumped IPL and ignore whatever comes with Dolphin.

**RachelB** · 10-26-2014, 02:31 AM #8

(10-24-2014, 11:38 PM)Shonumi Wrote: All of this files are part of Dolphin; check out the Git repository and you'll see Dolphin has the same binaries there. There should be no copyright issues with having Debian (or anyone else) include them in a package, so long as Dolphin's license is followed, i.e. any changes need to be documented and made available for others to apply. Afaik, they were reverse engineered; any copyrighted code (BIOS, NAND, DSP ROM) must be provided by the users themselves.

FYI, it's not always a safe assumption that because it's in the dolphin repo that it's not illegal. DSP dumps used to be there. The font files should definitely be looked into. I think everything else should be okay.

***Shonumi*** · 10-26-2014, 03:03 AM #9

When did Dolphin include Nintendo's DSP ROMs? SVN days? Just curious.

Anyway, I did some digging myself. I don't use my dumped IPL that often, but I opened it up in a hex editor and compared it to font_ansi.bin. Dolphin uses this to HLE the IPL, and it loads it up at a specified memory location for it's emulated IPL (0x1fcf00).

So I check out the memory location at 0x1fcf00 in my dumped IPL. The values appear similar in some places, but they're not a 1:1 match by any means. I guess if these files were RE'd properly, they'd have to be similar in some regards, else they wouldn't work. That or my IPL dump is just bad (works in Dolphin, so it can't be that corrupted...)

**RachelB** · 10-26-2014, 03:10 AM **#10**

(10-26-2014, 03:03 AM)Shonumi Wrote: When did Dolphin include Nintendo's DSP ROMs? SVN days? Just curious.

After 3.5