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Continued software development?

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Asudem:
i think the killswitch thing might make people quite uncomfortable.
-mouser (December 03, 2015, 11:31 PM)
--- End quote ---
I had a sinking feeling that that would be the case. It's unfortunate, but this software has questionable morals to it, but as far as I've researched, nothing illegal. Just another utility to do something you could do with already existing software for free, this just makes things super easy to do it. And if you're gonna do it, go for broke or go home as they say.

40hz:
i think the killswitch thing might make people quite uncomfortable.
-mouser (December 03, 2015, 11:31 PM)
--- End quote ---
I had a sinking feeling that that would be the case. It's unfortunate, but this software has questionable morals to it, but as far as I've researched, nothing illegal. Just another utility to do something you could do with already existing software for free, this just makes things super easy to do it. And if you're gonna do it, go for broke or go home as they say.
-Asudem (December 03, 2015, 11:34 PM)
--- End quote ---


FWIW putting a killswitch into the software would make for a very good legal argument under US law that you were aware there might be some sort of potential legal issue and you then tried to cover yourself with a technical fix if there should ever be a problem.

That won't fly too well in a US court, which tends to adopt the position that if you thought there might be a problem, you should have either gotten it straightened out before you went ahead - or just not done it at all. The fact that you expressed concern going into it is enough for someone to argue that you willfully did something you knew was wrong.

If you left out the killswitch, you could at least argue there was no intent to do something that might result in legal action. That wouldn't be enough to get you completely off the hook. But it would go a long way towards mitigating the consequences, since intent has a significant bearing on what penalties may be handed down following legal action.

The other thing is that using somebody's codebase without their specific permission (or a license) can land you in trouble if they ever show up again - as others here have pointed out. The fact that you're not charging for it won't matter. Sony and other game companies have shut down and taken legal action against people who have come up with free mods for their games. And in one situation there was a company (I think it was EA) who actually sued someone for innocently offering a free patch to fix a bug in the company's game code. So be careful with "abandoned" or "comatose" code. It still belongs to whoever originally wrote it - even if they stopped developing it and walked away.

Asudem:
Well, 40hz, when you're right you're right. I don't own the code nor can I get the author's consent to continue it, and what the program does is morally questionable to the point where I could see someone not wanting it released. The binary has actually been pulled down before, but strangely the source was not. It's sad to think it, but I should best leave my edits personal and closed source.

EDIT: Actually... I'm fairly confident I could hack these bugfixes into a trainer which modifies the program's memory. It could be run in conjunction with the original program, or does something like that have just as little legal ground as modifying the original source?

TaoPhoenix:

And killswitch aside, it's not about legal action, the guys are right that unless it's *public domain* it's copyrighted and needs that license, you can't just decide "oh well, it sat there". If there was a license to mod it, that's why I was asking, but without one you're stuck, and killswitches in programs raise a WHOLE OTHER mess related to security.

wraith808:
All of these arguments are theoretical, and not necessarily based on your current situation.  I've noted that the software in question isn't mentioned anywhere.  Is there a reason for this?  If you could post what the software is, where the site to get it is, etc., we could possible give more concrete answers based on facts, rather than assumptions.

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