Re:Paper Mario PC ports beckon as coder completes decompilat...
by m-p-3 on Sunday April 23, 2023 @12:53PM
(#35677956)
But they're not distributing the compiled output, only their own implementation of the source code which leads to that. If they happen to make their own source code which leads to the same assembly opcodes in the compiler, is that really copyright infringement?
Re:Paper Mario PC ports beckon as coder completes decompilat...
by AshamedCaptain on Sunday April 23, 2023 @12:59PM
(#35678016)
"But Your Honor, I'm not distributing copies of the copyrighted program, just another program which happens to generate the copyrighted program bit-by-bit! All my original creation, even though I was literally looking at the copyrighted program while developing it..."
Do you think that I can just gzip gplprogram.c and then redistribute gplprogram.c.gz under the "Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License"?
Re:Paper Mario PC ports beckon as coder completes decompilat...
by m-p-3 on Sunday April 23, 2023 @01:05PM
(#35678089)
Technically you would be distributing your own implementation, not the original source code. Copyright does allow you to do that. They just applied the concept of reproducible build on top.
We are not talking about a program that "produces the same binary output" when executed. We are talking about a program that _is exactly the same_ as the original one, bit-by-bit.
It is ridiculously impossible to "independently" discover a program that is _exactly the same machine code_ as the original program by just looking at the inputs and outputs of the original program. (Barring trivial programs, of course.)
This is not reverse engineering. This is just dissasembling and decompiling.