If he owns the game, then he can hack until his heart is content and he can talk about it here on Pinside all he wants. Completely legally. It’s in the distribution of his hacks that things can become illegal and a problem. You’re talking about this in a thread about a program that *hacks your game for you* (which is also legal).

The real question is continuing to talk about it in this thread. Wrong place. Start another thread in the modding forum about how to do what you want and maybe there are others who have done it and can help. It was fine to ask here, as this program might have done it, but since it doesn’t....

—Donnie

You're fearmongering. Stop it. I could go into details as to why what we're talking about has nothing to do with the above two cases, but instead I'll just say: STOP IT. Taking a pinball machine that you own and changing the code running on it yourself is completely within your Fair Use rights. Nothing in the law you posted says you can't do that, and nothing about the two cases you posted is in any way remotely close to what we're talking about here.

Just. Stop. Now. You either don't know what you're talking about, or you're a troll.

--Donnie

You're fearmongering. Stop it. I could go into details as to why what we're talking about has nothing to do with the above two cases, but instead I'll just say: STOP IT. Taking a pinball machine that you own and changing the code running on it yourself is completely within your Fair Use rights. Nothing in the law you posted says you can't do that, and nothing about the two cases you posted is in any way remotely close to what we're talking about here.

Just. Stop. Now. You either don't know what you're talking about, or you're a troll.

You cited two cases of people hacking systems they did not own or even possess.

We are talking about hacking a thing for which you own. I can't be clearer than that. If this is illegal, then pinball-browser and a myriad of other things would also be illegal, BUT THEY ARE NOT.

--Donnie

You can't do that.

ColorDMD colorizes what Stern ships. If you change what Stern ships they can't colorize it, period. You'd have to go into the ColorDMD setup menu to see if there's an option to change the default to something different, but it's going to simply be one solid color.

--Donnie

That’s a pretty big assumption, and likely not true. You’re also basically accusing Ollie of being a thief with *zero* evidence of such. In fact, we have contrary evidence in that he requires you to download open source video conversion tools if you’re doing video work instead of having built those tools in.

Also note that not ALL open source use *requires* you to open source your derivative work. Libraries like the LGPL as well as “public domain” as well as a few other licenses out there DO allow you to incorporate open source work into a closed source product legally.

Ollie is entitled to license his software however he wants. You are entitled to use it or not. But it’s not cool to accuse him of being a thief without evidence.

Ollie, maybe consider addressing this by creating a free tool that’s super easy to use that will let an end user take a macro file, assets, and a freshly downloaded .bin file and merge them into a new firmware. That will make it a LOT easier for the end user, still allow for legal distribution, and get rid of the “but you’re just trying to get more people to buy your software and those folks probably can’t figure out how to use it anyway” thing. Or make that version a lot cheaper, anyway? Just throwing out ideas.

—Donnie

You really shouldn't comment on things you know very little about.

What Ollie's tool does is perfectly legal. Creating a tool to edit copyrighted material is and has always been legal. Have you never seen a simple sound editing tool? Do you think it's illegal to download a copyright song and edit it? Because it's not. It's likely illegal to redistribute that edit, but that's not the tool's fault, nor does it make the tool illegal.

--Donnie

If Ollie wants to license his software so that your friend has to buy it to use it, too, that’s within his right to do. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t give you the right to make insinuations about Ollie’s character.

This is 100% about what you want, not about what Ollie is doing that’s somehow wrong in your eyes. You insinuated that he stole software, period. Whether you meant it that way or not, that’s what you did. It’s obvious that you really don’t understand how copyright and fair use work.

And FFS it’s $20 per user. It’s dirt frickin cheap already for what it does. Get over yourself and thank the man for selling it so cheap before he decides it’s not worth the hassle. If he stops updating it then it’ll likely stop working forever since Stern has decided to become a moving target.

—Donnie

Ollie said he can take your license IF HE FINDS OUT. He will find out if you start selling or making full firmware available for download. Those are the things Stern does NOT want to see. Stern likely won’t know or care if someone does a custom firmware for their buddy.

Their buddy should do the right thing and pay Ollie if they like their new song for $20 worth. But if they don’t pay him he’s not going to be out there trying to find you, either.

So don’t be a jerk and start selling firmware. Don’t be a jerk and put full files up for people to download. And if you like the output of his work and benefit from it? Throw the man a $20. It’s worth more than that.

This isn’t that hard.

This has been floated as a reason, but I’m not 100% sure this is the reason until someone from Stern says so. Then I’ll be about 20% sure. Otherwise it’s a theory someone posted and enough people apparently thought plausible enough that it’s turned into some kind of gospel.

—Donnie

One, I’d bet the number of Mac users among Pinball owners is significantly higher than that for socio-economic reasons. Two, even if it’s “just” 15%, how many other ways can you increase the sales of your software by 15% (or more)? These days I doubt it’s 15% more work to port to a UI that can handle both, and I can’t help but wonder if support issues aren’t going to just cancel out the folks who are having problems trying to run it under emulation/vm/whatever on a Mac now.

—Donnie

I didn’t mean to imply it was an easy task. And note that *you* added the “just”, not me. Once ported you could probably then port to Linux as well fairly easily, though.

I will say this: porting it in a mediocre way will make it worse on all platforms. Porting it *well* will make it better on all platforms. As a developer, learning how to target multiple platforms will make you a better developer, too. So there are benefits to the extra work, but sure, it isn’t trivial nor even easy.

—Donnie

Good lord chill out. Nobody is badgering Ollie. It’s asked occasionally, likely by people newer to the thread who haven’t read the entire thing and don’t know. Then people who aren’t Ollie have to chime in with how stupid it is to even ask and it starts an argument. If the answer was from Ollie and it was “sorry, not my jam” it would likely invoke an “oh well, maybe someday” or no response at all, but instead here we are.

—Donnie

Oh we never even got started down THAT road, pal! lol.

Seriously, it's fine. I think the biggest part of the problem is that we live in a world where all this exists in a never ending single thread. Some folks are all-in and been here since the beginning, and many people come and go. There's natural conflict between those two worlds. There's no real FAQ to point people to or anything because Ollie is so good about just answering almost everything right here.

There are plenty of good things about the never-ending-thread model, but there are some downsides, too. *shrug*

--Donnie

Go read the very first post in this thread.

—Donnie

IANAL, but based on what I do know about fair use doctrine I don't believe any of what that says is enforceable. They can't stop anyone from creating tools that edit their work, and they can't stop the end user from doing it for themselves. Sure, it's probably a bad idea to edit their work and then sell the machine to someone else without putting their code back in unedited form. And it's DEFINITELY not cool to edit their work and share your edits of their work with their work in it. Can you share a macro that edits their work but doesn't include any of their work? Yes, I believe that would fall under fair use, just like they can't and won't be able to stop Ollie from updating Pinball Browser and selling it.

This would be directly analogous to the music industry trying to say you can't create your own mixtape for your own use of music you legally purchased. *shrug*

--Donnie

It’s also worth nothing this little gem in there:

“You will not use or install any Unauthorized Content or Unauthorized Software.”

That, in and of itself, would preclude many, if not all, playfield mods. It definitely seems to preclude any playfield mods that play their own content or require their own software (so the Tron minicab, anything done with Pinduino, the TV for TZ, etc). If it were, indeed, enforceable. I dunno, the more I think about what they are trying to do here in both what they want as well as the potential unintended consequences, the more I don’t like it.

If I thought this was all CYA legalese then I wouldn’t much care, but they seem to be trying already to enforce these things, both by encrypting firmware as well as the part they added about how trying to use edited software may INTENTIONALLY brick your pinball machine. This looks to be the end of my willingness to buy a Stern pinball machine.

—Donnie

It is currently removed, yes. It doesn't even appear in downloaded firmware, README, or anything I could find. But it definitely *did* exist.

--Donnie

I’ve tried it on several different browsers and never seen it myself.

—Donnie