Comment Something about this doesn't feel right. (Score 5, Informative) 458
After I wrote my Playstation Documentation Project I have had to dance with Sony playing the intellectual property game with me and Connectix. I've taken up a hobby of watching Sony pretty closely when it comes to them protecting thier I.P. and tend to become even more intrested when they start becoming "generous" like this. It's hard to think that there are no strings attached. Allow me to give you a little history.
When Sony released the "Net Yaroze" (A grey PSX painted black for hobbiests), there was a very restrictive licence in the contract you had to sign. This included a "all programs created with the Yaroze are property of Sony" clause. They also popped in an NDA for good mesure too. It was a little too resticting for me.
When I was halfway though my Doc, I let my e-mail show up on a PSXDev mailing list informing them of the Doc I was working on. I almost immidiatly got an e-mail from Sony of Japan(!) asking if I spoke Japanese. When I answered that I did, I got a real nastygram in Japanese basicly saying that if I even think about publising any of the libary commands to the PSX I'd be up the proverbial estuary without means of locomotion. A few months later I published, had a little tussle about the BIOS hooks, and now I'm here.
I haven't played with the Japanese Linux for PS2, but it still stinks. I used to live in Japan and know first hand that they have very restrictive intellectual property laws. (Like music CDs that are made for rental and others that you can buy, but they have to be at a sold at a particular price set by the company.) I can tell you right away, If you are thinking of doing anything that reqires accessing the CD/DVD-ROM, such as DVD Playback, reading files files from a disk, or even finding something in /dev you are going to be sorely disappointed. If you can access the CD-ROM, color me suprised.
Be aware that were will probably going to be proprietary drives/libs that you will not be able to reverse without Sony calling the lawyers. I know you will have *ZERO* access to the bootloader. Once again, if this isn't the case, I'll be pleasently suprised again.
Finally, I doubt that you will be able to play PS2 games/DVDs out of the moniter adapter. If you do, if I remeber, you will only get the green channel to show up.
I'm also sure that if you make a copy of the Linux disk for some sap with a hacked harddrive and a modchip, Sony will be knocking.
Just a heads up.
-Joshua Walker
When Sony released the "Net Yaroze" (A grey PSX painted black for hobbiests), there was a very restrictive licence in the contract you had to sign. This included a "all programs created with the Yaroze are property of Sony" clause. They also popped in an NDA for good mesure too. It was a little too resticting for me.
When I was halfway though my Doc, I let my e-mail show up on a PSXDev mailing list informing them of the Doc I was working on. I almost immidiatly got an e-mail from Sony of Japan(!) asking if I spoke Japanese. When I answered that I did, I got a real nastygram in Japanese basicly saying that if I even think about publising any of the libary commands to the PSX I'd be up the proverbial estuary without means of locomotion. A few months later I published, had a little tussle about the BIOS hooks, and now I'm here.
I haven't played with the Japanese Linux for PS2, but it still stinks. I used to live in Japan and know first hand that they have very restrictive intellectual property laws. (Like music CDs that are made for rental and others that you can buy, but they have to be at a sold at a particular price set by the company.) I can tell you right away, If you are thinking of doing anything that reqires accessing the CD/DVD-ROM, such as DVD Playback, reading files files from a disk, or even finding something in
Be aware that were will probably going to be proprietary drives/libs that you will not be able to reverse without Sony calling the lawyers. I know you will have *ZERO* access to the bootloader. Once again, if this isn't the case, I'll be pleasently suprised again.
Finally, I doubt that you will be able to play PS2 games/DVDs out of the moniter adapter. If you do, if I remeber, you will only get the green channel to show up.
I'm also sure that if you make a copy of the Linux disk for some sap with a hacked harddrive and a modchip, Sony will be knocking.
Just a heads up.
-Joshua Walker
