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Comment by nerdjon | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the difference here should be fairly obvious.

One is an open protocol, and one is proprietary technology. AWS even at one point supported the protocol.

I don't know if it's still a thing but it wasn't terribly uncommon to find Linux distros and other legitimate things shared through that protocol.

Here we are talking about proprietary technology by Nintendo. On a system that they are currently selling and making money on.

Given how much money they were bring in on patrion, it isn't much different than if they tried to make a physical knock off switch that could run switch games.

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> it isn't much different than if they tried to make a physical knock off switch that could run switch games.

Over in computer land we would call that "IBM PC Compatible".

I think it'd be closer to a Hackintosh.

Anyone else old enough to remember Connectix Virtual Game Station [1] for, like, MacOS 9 I think?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station

> Here we are talking about proprietary technology by Nintendo.

x86 is also proprietary technology that Intel is currently making money on. Should Intel be able to sue AMD out of existence?

NVIDIA's GPU specs are proprietary technology that NVIDIA is currently making money on. Should NVIDIA be able to shut down Nouveau?

Flash is proprietary technology that Adobe still sells under the name Adobe Animate. Should Adobe be able to shut down Ruffle?

> x86 is also proprietary technology. Should Intel be able to sue AMD out of existence?

AMD has a perpetual license from Intel to use the technology.

Nouveau is different, you are still buying Nvidia cards just running an open source driver. Nvidia doesn't make money on their drivers, they make money on the graphics cards.

Similar situation to Ruffle, Adobe never charged for the end user to download flash. It was free. Ruffle is an alternative to that. Also it is worth mentioning that flash is all but dead and this really just keeps it breathing.

While both companies probably could make an argument to argue for a take down of both, they have no incentive to do it.

> AMD has a perpetual license from Intel to use the technology.

AMD only managed to negotiate that because Intel lost in arbitration [1]. Intel's preferred option was always to eliminate AMD entirely. It's good for us consumers that they didn't succeed in that!

> While both companies probably could make an argument to argue for a take down of both, they have no incentive to do it.

NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of Nouveau. Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner workings) that they would prefer to keep secret.

More examples: JavaScript was proprietary technology at the time. The fact that it was specific to Netscape browsers absolutely benefited Netscape's business model. The existence of Chrome depends on the fact that Netscape had no grounds to go after Microsoft for an independent implementation.

SMB is a proprietary Microsoft technology. '90s Microsoft would definitely have preferred to keep that specific to Windows in order to sell more Windows licenses. It's good for the industry that Microsoft never felt they could go after Samba.

Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees. Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD#IBM_PC_and_the_x86_archite...

> AMD only managed to negotiate that because Intel lost in arbitration [1]. Intel's preferred option was always to eliminate AMD entirely. It's good for us consumers that they didn't succeed in that!

OK? regardless of why or how it happened, it happened and it means that AMD is fine. If you knew that I don't know why you even mentioned it in the first place.

> NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of Nouveau. Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner workings) that they would prefer to keep secret.

Any articles to back that up? Seems counter to Nvidia offering support in publishing documents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_(software)#History

> Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees. Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this.

Again would love an article on this. I can't find anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on Audodesk's website do they mention third party software but they have an SDK for this file format for others to use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up what you claim.

> OK? regardless of why or how it happened, it happened and it means that AMD is fine.

AMD is only fine because Intel wasn't able to sue them out of existence. If Intel had managed to do in the 90s what Nintendo did to Yuzu just now, there'd be no Ryzen today.

> Seems counter to Nvidia offering support in publishing documents

NVIDIA only started publishing documents because Nouveau's success in reverse engineering meant that it was pointless trying to pretend that the genie could be put back in the bottle. Nintendo undoubtedly knows this too; lawsuits like this in 2024 ultimately aren't rational moves on their part, but big conservative Japanese companies have never been known to be particularly adaptable.

> Again would love an article on this. I can't find anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on Audodesk's website do they mention third party software but they have an SDK for this file format for others to use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up what you claim.

I found it myself when I was documenting the FBX file format (which I eventually gave up on because it was too horrifying of a format to motivate continuing) [1]. Blender calls it "CRC rules", but I think it's actually an attempt to lock non-licensees out. The SDK is closed-source, proprietary, and comes with a whole bunch of restrictions in its EULA.

[1]: https://github.com/blender/blender-addons/blob/main/io_scene...

>x86 is also proprietary technology that Intel is currently making money on. Should Intel be able to sue AMD out of existence?

AMD has a license to the x86 architecture, alongside Via (though I'm not sure if they even make x86 chips anymore). I'm sure Intel would love to take back AMD's license, but they're probably too afraid of antitrust actions to try.

Intel won't revoke AMD's license, because they themselves are licensing the 64-bit architecture from AMD. It's called amd64 for a reason.

Yep. It's a great example of how keeping clean-room reverse engineering legal is good for the industry. While Intel was stuck in Itanium hell, AMD was able to leapfrog them and create x86-64 because it had been legally successful with reverse engineering 32-bit x86 in the past. If Intel had been able to crush AMD in the 90s, there's a good chance x86 would be dead by now.

Android built their own implementation of the proprietary Java language to be able to run programs that were written to run on the official JRE. Can you imagine if Oracle tried to sue Google over that? :)

> Given how much money they were bring in on patrion, it isn't much different than if they tried to make a physical knock off switch that could run switch games.

Why would that be a problem? As long as they're not actually violating trademarks or patents and making an actual counterfeit product, there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to make their own hardware that is compatible with Switch games.

These products already exist for other systems, and they are a good way to allow you to play your existing games on more modern hardware.

Just because it upsets some executive at Nintendo doesn't make it illegal.

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