I joined the Distributed.net effort specifically because I wanted to help out working with the golomb rulers, a very interesting mathematical project. I really have no interest in cracking any form of encryption. Yes, it can be done brute force. We know that already. We don't know what the 24 mark optimal golomb ruler is. So finding it would be cool. Anyhow, nowhere on the distributed.net page does it say when the new clients will be available... does anyone have any insider information on whether the client upgrades they are considering are going to take awhile?
Adding the conversion call is easy, sure, but the 'improved progress reporting' and such... any idea how long it'll take?
I'd never really thought about it before... every once in awhile I pick up a USA Today, but the past few times I'd already heard the news hours earlier. I don't think its mostly due to the web, its due to the fact that as a fact-loving hound, there are so many other ways to get information. The web, mailing lists, and especially talk radio.
If I want to know what is going to be on the news tomorrow, I check the Associated Press web pages and the breaking news section.
Also, another problem I personally have with newspapers is portability... they're huge! All I need to carry around talk radio is an extremely small radio (for when I'm not in the car). All I need to interact with Slashdot.org is fingers and knowing my password - computers are everywhere I go (college, work, home, friend's places). But to carry around a newspaper without mangling it it tough, I can't jam it in my backpack, I can't keep it in the pockets of my trenchcoat, I basically have to carry it around in my hands... and then I'm covered with ink. Blah.
As for the argument for local stuff, around here the local talk radio stations are nothing but local until noon when the national shows start...
I know how to program in C++. You need to stop thinking in C++ and start thinking in terms of object oriented concepts and how they most easily can be conceptualized. When it comes to the point "How are we going to intiate new instances of classes?" and you elect to invent weird interfaces (how much sense does the tilde make?!) instead of simply building some overloading (an object priented concept) onto it. All classes get inherited down from some UberClass which has a virtual function.new() and.delete() which are public static procedures (C++ doesn't have these at all), you overload those for every class that needs it, for others it inherits the default behavior.
You can't say "Let's see, how can we improve C++" and the insist on not improving C++ because you've already bent your thoughts around it and don't want to do it differently unless theres a really good reason to do it the C++ way. I don't see any reason to invent 2 new keywords into the language, invent a couple new conventions for declaring classes, etc, when it can all be done within a holistic OO framework quite simply.
Simple, instead of doing A = new classname; you do: A = classname.new()
And that may seem odd to you if you're completely into C++ and nothing else. Its quite normal in Java to have methods called on the object name and not on an instance of the pobject (called static public methods in Java and a GREAT encapsulation method).
Esperandi Doing classname.new() is cosmetic... what do you think this discussion was about? It's about removing the unqieldy nature that C++ has
IANAB (I Am Not A Bjarne), but I personally think that a language like Eiffel or possibly Eiffel itself will really be the next generation language. Tim Sweeney (creator of ZZT with OOP, code on Unreal and UnrealScript) wrote an article for Gamespy discussing what the next language would be. He nailed the features that Eiffel boasts one by one. I emailed him and he said he had been looking at Eiffel and it looked very promising, so at least someone is looking at it;)
If Eiffel does not take over, I am betting the next generation language will mimic the features of Eiffel and most likely the implementation style. Eiffel compiles down to a form of bytecode so that incremental builds are *FAST*. Another big thing is that Eiffel supports a lot of things only in the debug phase. While debugging, it can set limits on a variable and throw an exception whenever that variable goes out of bounds. It can guarantee preconditions and postconditions easily, etc. All of these things would cause extreme code bloat and slowness if compiled into the final, but Eiffel doesn't do that. I don't think the next generation language will either, I think compiling a debug and a release build will be radically different from the compilers point of view. Eiffel compiles to bytecode for debug, and to system native code when building a release.
I think its pretty easy to see why C++ is so huge and unwiedly. They took teh OO concepts which were simple and wrapped it around C instead of inventing an entirely new language. This was both good and bad. Bad because it made the language balloon and become obtuse like it is, good because people moving from C are used to the syntax mostly.
I can think of some things that could easily improve OO languages, both C++ and Java... why are constructors and destructors so weird? They stick out like sore thumbs and feel like a hack. Named the same as the class, no return type at all, etc... the destructor is even worse with its tilde.
My recommendation to solve at least that one problem in both. A classes constructor is called classname.new(). A classes destructor is called classname.delete(). Simple. Makes sense. Inside those functions you use the standalaone new and delete things. Outside, when you want to delete a class you simply do classname.delete();
Esperandi BTW, Eiffel is what happens when you make the language from scratch without trying to steal syntax... and Eiffel kicks some ass for OO stuff.
Do you believe that implementing Design by Contract, invariants, and other features present in Eiffel in C++ would be a good idea? or at least a really cool one?
Nice try, but you're just confused on the whole subject. You see, Intel can't get RAMBUS to work and if they did it would be even more expensive than their overinflated underperforming chips.
I think the whole thing is a scam by Intel to get people convinced that computers are SUPPOSED to be tremendously expensive (they were supposed to be 5 years ago, but not now) again so that people won't laugh so hard when they see that a P3 is $100 more than an Athlon at the same clock rating and the Athlon grinds its ass into the dust on performance.
It's not a generalization when a group of people stand up and say "we hate money. It ruins everything. The richest man in the world is our sworn enemy until the say we die." to guess that those people are poor.
And yes, some people have hobbies, but most people if you walked up to them and offered to pay them for doing their hobbies wouldn't run away thinking you were the most outrageous and immoral person to have ever existed...
Yeah, reverse engineering is explcitly legal as spelled out in the DMCA, old news. But the court case going on now is about patent infringement. People don't seem to be realizing that it doesn't matter if you come to the same conclusion separately, if they're copyrighted the process, you have to change yours or get some nice fines and maybe prison time...
Esperandi You can't patent ideas or concepts, only very very specific designs... being as the Connectix product is software and everything in the PSX is hard ware I don't see how patent law would apply, but I guess the courts will show.
You're right, the DMCA doesn't say that. The original lawsuit against Bleem! was not in reference to the DMCA. It was basically saying that Sony would lose all kinds of software revenue because of illegal use.
Think back to the Rio case, this issue is similar. the *ONLY* reason that the Rio is legal is because it "couldn't" be used to distribute MP3s (the software has since been hacked and now it can, but this is not Diamond's fault or legal responsibility). This is kinda the same thing. You can compete with Sony, but only if you're going to compete with them fairly. Offer a similar product that doesn't infringe on other peoples rights and such. being able to play copied games (and there are thousands flying around the net) would make this like another mod chip lawsuit. One side claims that its for playing japanese games, Sony claims its to play copied games (it is). I don't know who won that one, but the courts are almost never on the side of emulators so I wouldn't tempt them.
No, it wouldn't go well... for MSN. Can you imagine the outcry? And if Microsoft tried to steal some thunder away from Linux and Linus could reasonably prove that the "Linux" they're talking about is a competing operating system (what his trademark is for) and being used in that fashion, bang, Torvalds vs Microsoft. Court case of the century;)
Esperandi I'd sure as hell tune in, if only to see the protesters outside!
Oh, I realized what you were talking about, and I agree with you.. I was just trying to explain why people tend to fall all over themselves and they can't just stand back as you did and say "wait, this is frigging UGLY!"... they can't see the ugly, their nose picked up the new OS smell and its like a weird hallucinogen that makes you forget you actually have to *USE* computers, not just say "pretty" and stare...
Think about the business possibilities here. Linux is getting commercialized (good thing). All the Open Source guys are used to eating ramen noodles and working at McDonalds so that they don't *GASP* get paid for programming. If you walk up to them and say "We'll give you $10 for your website", they'l drool and pant and hump your leg because they can't upload the pages to your server fast enough.
Now, fast forward 10 years. Linux is an established server OS with lots of interest invested in it. The people running the websites realize that its not evil to get paid for working on something you love. How much would it cost to get the website from those people? Hundreds of thousands if not millions!
What is the real moneymaker of these sites? Well, not much besides the fact that you can say "look how many poor open source programmers I feed while they give their lifeblood for you to have software without effort".... but in the open source community, that is one of the best PR moves you could ever make.
Esperandi The numbers given in this post are not real. I realize that VA paid more than $10 for Slashdot, I'm just trying to illustrate a point. Flame me now, remember me later when I'm right.
When someone switches to a new OS with a new face or, shock of shocks, new elements in the GUI that provide different functionality (Linux has none of these, sadly (or should that be yet? anyone working on new user interface designs and not just prettier pictures?)) they get knocked on their ass by the new OS "smell". They've been using and staring at the same old thing for months, they see something new and it doesn't matter if its ugly or slower or harder to use, they love it. its something new, and new means good, right?
Very few people objectively evalualte an OS before claiming it as the new wave, they see the "new" way and think its the future. (I put quotes around that new cause I remembered that Linux doesn't have anything new to its command line design that it didn't copy from Unix but I've still seen people get floored by it simply because it was different)
Linux (well, X) provides a unqiue ability in an OS that keeps around a lot of people - continual new OS smell. Need a recharge on that smell? Pop in a new window manager! It doesn't matter if you go from Enlightenment to fvwm or the other way around, its *NEW*!
Dude, that *IS* Open Source. Sure, you could do it yourself, but you sit around and wait until someone else puts together the pieces other people have worked on and then they can get people to drool over them without doing hardly any work!
Well, it's an interesting idea if the only thing you use email for is to talk to real people. Probably 99% of my email is listserves. I have a right to require them to put MY filtering words in their subject? They're not going to unless they're morons. You order something from amazon.com and theres a problem with your order? You'll never know about it because you bounced their mail back with your silly rules to either an empty address or to/dev/null (no one is supposed to reply to those order confirmation things).
There are a plentitude of reasons why this is an unworkable idea. My suggestion is that you delete spam when you get it and get on your life. It's what I do unless the spam is downright funny. I've seen some very entertaining spam;)
I get about 200 emails a day, I post all over the place and use my real email address, and I maybe get 1 spam a week, its not a problem.
My favorite trick however is finding 2 autoresponders and hooking them up into a mail loop.
Well, the legal precedent set back in BBS days would say that it would be illegal to send spam inside of Colorado to anywhere. If the server is in CO, the spam is ilegal, if not, its not. If you download porn that's obscene by your "community standards", you can't do anything about it unless it's obscene where it was sent from.
This is why internet taxation could really fuck things up legally. If the law stays like this, every e-commerce server moves to India or some islands or something and we lose a TON of jobs or they make an exception to this legal precedent and we have to rewrite all the laws based on it which includes the mailorder laws they were based on. So then we have to change all the mailorder laws and tax that too.
You'd still have to buy the games. And if you get someone to hack the code for you to remove the copy protection, you will do a great deal of harm all the way around. To Sony, to game companies, to Connectix, and to the open source movement.
Even if the idea of pirating every PSX game you can imagine makes you jiggle like Captain Kirk with a tribble down his pants, you should keep that private, it makes you look like a bottom feeder.
If they had released a version of their software which played copied playstation games, they would have absolutely no chance in hell of ever winning a court case. Right now they're fighting a court case almost exactly the same as DeCSS. Sony makes a proprietary player, these guys have developed a better player (it IS better than a PSX because you can run at higher resolutions than a TV can handle). Sony is arguing patent infringments, but they've lost this court case before to the people who make Bleem!, a PSX emulator for the PC. Both of these products can survive as long as they implement the copy procedures.
Just because they're not complete dirtbags hell-bent on letting people play burned PSX CDs doesn't mean they won't release it open source. Not everyone gets into open source so that they can get software for free.
While I realize this story is most likely not true (see the post that's moderated up at the top, I doubt anything will replace it), if it were true, everyones reaction who knows anything at all about emulators should be saying "Well, duh". There are probably not a handful of closed source emulators, but there are hundreds and hundreds of open source ones.
Being surprised at this would be like being surprised at a roguelike being open-sourced.
The emulation community is a good example of what *REALLY* happens with open source stuff. Linux is really a big freak in the open source world, 99% of other open source projects release their code to no avail and are never improved upon and their code is never used to create variant software. One emulator, SNES9x, was railed against for having closed source. Everyone shouted that as soon as the source was released, the pieces of the SNES that were not emulated yet would be within days. The source code has been released for around 2 years now and no one has modified it save the 2 original authors. It's a perfect example of what happens in most open source projects, there is an element of risk thrown in with open sourcing your software. Sure, all bugs are shallow with enough eyes, but wheres the guarantee those eyes will show up or that people more competent in the subject than the original authors won't want to start over from scratch and do it themselves? More often the latter happens than anything else. They see someone did something cool and decides to do it themselves in a different way and they improve on it in that way... same thing that happens in the closed source world.
ahh, but naming your software "windows 2000" or things like that would be illegal. Naming it Linux would not be (since the trademark only applies to computer operating systems and nothing else at all), but those other names are copyrighted for just about every form of software in existence. Well, maybe not apache, I honestly have no knowledge of its trademark status...
Slashdot Mirror
I joined the Distributed.net effort specifically because I wanted to help out working with the golomb rulers, a very interesting mathematical project. I really have no interest in cracking any form of encryption. Yes, it can be done brute force. We know that already. We don't know what the 24 mark optimal golomb ruler is. So finding it would be cool. Anyhow, nowhere on the distributed.net page does it say when the new clients will be available... does anyone have any insider information on whether the client upgrades they are considering are going to take awhile?
Adding the conversion call is easy, sure, but the 'improved progress reporting' and such... any idea how long it'll take?
Esperandi
I'd never really thought about it before... every once in awhile I pick up a USA Today, but the past few times I'd already heard the news hours earlier. I don't think its mostly due to the web, its due to the fact that as a fact-loving hound, there are so many other ways to get information. The web, mailing lists, and especially talk radio.
If I want to know what is going to be on the news tomorrow, I check the Associated Press web pages and the breaking news section.
Also, another problem I personally have with newspapers is portability... they're huge! All I need to carry around talk radio is an extremely small radio (for when I'm not in the car). All I need to interact with Slashdot.org is fingers and knowing my password - computers are everywhere I go (college, work, home, friend's places). But to carry around a newspaper without mangling it it tough, I can't jam it in my backpack, I can't keep it in the pockets of my trenchcoat, I basically have to carry it around in my hands... and then I'm covered with ink. Blah.
As for the argument for local stuff, around here the local talk radio stations are nothing but local until noon when the national shows start...
Esperandi
I know how to program in C++. You need to stop thinking in C++ and start thinking in terms of object oriented concepts and how they most easily can be conceptualized. When it comes to the point "How are we going to intiate new instances of classes?" and you elect to invent weird interfaces (how much sense does the tilde make?!) instead of simply building some overloading (an object priented concept) onto it. All classes get inherited down from some UberClass which has a virtual function .new() and .delete() which are public static procedures (C++ doesn't have these at all), you overload those for every class that needs it, for others it inherits the default behavior.
You can't say "Let's see, how can we improve C++" and the insist on not improving C++ because you've already bent your thoughts around it and don't want to do it differently unless theres a really good reason to do it the C++ way. I don't see any reason to invent 2 new keywords into the language, invent a couple new conventions for declaring classes, etc, when it can all be done within a holistic OO framework quite simply.
Esperandi
Simple, instead of doing
A = new classname;
you do:
A = classname.new()
And that may seem odd to you if you're completely into C++ and nothing else. Its quite normal in Java to have methods called on the object name and not on an instance of the pobject (called static public methods in Java and a GREAT encapsulation method).
Esperandi
Doing classname.new() is cosmetic... what do you think this discussion was about? It's about removing the unqieldy nature that C++ has
IANAB (I Am Not A Bjarne), but I personally think that a language like Eiffel or possibly Eiffel itself will really be the next generation language. Tim Sweeney (creator of ZZT with OOP, code on Unreal and UnrealScript) wrote an article for Gamespy discussing what the next language would be. He nailed the features that Eiffel boasts one by one. I emailed him and he said he had been looking at Eiffel and it looked very promising, so at least someone is looking at it ;)
If Eiffel does not take over, I am betting the next generation language will mimic the features of Eiffel and most likely the implementation style. Eiffel compiles down to a form of bytecode so that incremental builds are *FAST*. Another big thing is that Eiffel supports a lot of things only in the debug phase. While debugging, it can set limits on a variable and throw an exception whenever that variable goes out of bounds. It can guarantee preconditions and postconditions easily, etc. All of these things would cause extreme code bloat and slowness if compiled into the final, but Eiffel doesn't do that. I don't think the next generation language will either, I think compiling a debug and a release build will be radically different from the compilers point of view. Eiffel compiles to bytecode for debug, and to system native code when building a release.
Esperandi
I think its pretty easy to see why C++ is so huge and unwiedly. They took teh OO concepts which were simple and wrapped it around C instead of inventing an entirely new language. This was both good and bad. Bad because it made the language balloon and become obtuse like it is, good because people moving from C are used to the syntax mostly.
I can think of some things that could easily improve OO languages, both C++ and Java... why are constructors and destructors so weird? They stick out like sore thumbs and feel like a hack. Named the same as the class, no return type at all, etc... the destructor is even worse with its tilde.
My recommendation to solve at least that one problem in both. A classes constructor is called classname.new(). A classes destructor is called classname.delete(). Simple. Makes sense. Inside those functions you use the standalaone new and delete things. Outside, when you want to delete a class you simply do classname.delete();
Esperandi
BTW, Eiffel is what happens when you make the language from scratch without trying to steal syntax... and Eiffel kicks some ass for OO stuff.
Do you believe that implementing Design by Contract, invariants, and other features present in Eiffel in C++ would be a good idea? or at least a really cool one?
Esperandi
Nice try, but you're just confused on the whole subject. You see, Intel can't get RAMBUS to work and if they did it would be even more expensive than their overinflated underperforming chips.
I think the whole thing is a scam by Intel to get people convinced that computers are SUPPOSED to be tremendously expensive (they were supposed to be 5 years ago, but not now) again so that people won't laugh so hard when they see that a P3 is $100 more than an Athlon at the same clock rating and the Athlon grinds its ass into the dust on performance.
Esperandi
Just received my Athlon yesterday... man, not only are these things badass performers, but they actually FEEL beefy!
Esperandi
Whenever I hear RAMBUS, I try not to laugh too hard because I once almost choked to death on my own spit just pondering RAMBUS...
It's not a generalization when a group of people stand up and say "we hate money. It ruins everything. The richest man in the world is our sworn enemy until the say we die." to guess that those people are poor.
And yes, some people have hobbies, but most people if you walked up to them and offered to pay them for doing their hobbies wouldn't run away thinking you were the most outrageous and immoral person to have ever existed...
Esperandi
Yeah, reverse engineering is explcitly legal as spelled out in the DMCA, old news. But the court case going on now is about patent infringement. People don't seem to be realizing that it doesn't matter if you come to the same conclusion separately, if they're copyrighted the process, you have to change yours or get some nice fines and maybe prison time...
Esperandi
You can't patent ideas or concepts, only very very specific designs... being as the Connectix product is software and everything in the PSX is hard ware I don't see how patent law would apply, but I guess the courts will show.
You're right, the DMCA doesn't say that. The original lawsuit against Bleem! was not in reference to the DMCA. It was basically saying that Sony would lose all kinds of software revenue because of illegal use.
Think back to the Rio case, this issue is similar. the *ONLY* reason that the Rio is legal is because it "couldn't" be used to distribute MP3s (the software has since been hacked and now it can, but this is not Diamond's fault or legal responsibility). This is kinda the same thing. You can compete with Sony, but only if you're going to compete with them fairly. Offer a similar product that doesn't infringe on other peoples rights and such. being able to play copied games (and there are thousands flying around the net) would make this like another mod chip lawsuit. One side claims that its for playing japanese games, Sony claims its to play copied games (it is). I don't know who won that one, but the courts are almost never on the side of emulators so I wouldn't tempt them.
Esperandi
No, it wouldn't go well... for MSN. Can you imagine the outcry? And if Microsoft tried to steal some thunder away from Linux and Linus could reasonably prove that the "Linux" they're talking about is a competing operating system (what his trademark is for) and being used in that fashion, bang, Torvalds vs Microsoft. Court case of the century ;)
Esperandi
I'd sure as hell tune in, if only to see the protesters outside!
Oh, I realized what you were talking about, and I agree with you.. I was just trying to explain why people tend to fall all over themselves and they can't just stand back as you did and say "wait, this is frigging UGLY!"... they can't see the ugly, their nose picked up the new OS smell and its like a weird hallucinogen that makes you forget you actually have to *USE* computers, not just say "pretty" and stare...
Esperandi
If I were etoy, I'd change my domain tomorrow. And then I'd laugh until a hernia popped clean out of my abdomen and shot across the desk.
Esperandi
Think about the business possibilities here. Linux is getting commercialized (good thing). All the Open Source guys are used to eating ramen noodles and working at McDonalds so that they don't *GASP* get paid for programming. If you walk up to them and say "We'll give you $10 for your website", they'l drool and pant and hump your leg because they can't upload the pages to your server fast enough.
Now, fast forward 10 years. Linux is an established server OS with lots of interest invested in it. The people running the websites realize that its not evil to get paid for working on something you love. How much would it cost to get the website from those people? Hundreds of thousands if not millions!
What is the real moneymaker of these sites? Well, not much besides the fact that you can say "look how many poor open source programmers I feed while they give their lifeblood for you to have software without effort".... but in the open source community, that is one of the best PR moves you could ever make.
Esperandi
The numbers given in this post are not real. I realize that VA paid more than $10 for Slashdot, I'm just trying to illustrate a point. Flame me now, remember me later when I'm right.
When someone switches to a new OS with a new face or, shock of shocks, new elements in the GUI that provide different functionality (Linux has none of these, sadly (or should that be yet? anyone working on new user interface designs and not just prettier pictures?)) they get knocked on their ass by the new OS "smell". They've been using and staring at the same old thing for months, they see something new and it doesn't matter if its ugly or slower or harder to use, they love it. its something new, and new means good, right?
Very few people objectively evalualte an OS before claiming it as the new wave, they see the "new" way and think its the future. (I put quotes around that new cause I remembered that Linux doesn't have anything new to its command line design that it didn't copy from Unix but I've still seen people get floored by it simply because it was different)
Linux (well, X) provides a unqiue ability in an OS that keeps around a lot of people - continual new OS smell. Need a recharge on that smell? Pop in a new window manager! It doesn't matter if you go from Enlightenment to fvwm or the other way around, its *NEW*!
Esperandi
I guess I took him on his word when he said:
"And on top of that, it would make an entirely free way to play playstation games. "
I didn't parse that as "And on top of that, it would make an entirely free way to spend $60 on playstation games and then play them!"
Esperandi
But I'm certain he will claim that he would never think of pirating PSX games.
Dude, that *IS* Open Source. Sure, you could do it yourself, but you sit around and wait until someone else puts together the pieces other people have worked on and then they can get people to drool over them without doing hardly any work!
Esperandi
Well, it's an interesting idea if the only thing you use email for is to talk to real people. Probably 99% of my email is listserves. I have a right to require them to put MY filtering words in their subject? They're not going to unless they're morons. You order something from amazon.com and theres a problem with your order? You'll never know about it because you bounced their mail back with your silly rules to either an empty address or to /dev/null (no one is supposed to reply to those order confirmation things).
;)
There are a plentitude of reasons why this is an unworkable idea. My suggestion is that you delete spam when you get it and get on your life. It's what I do unless the spam is downright funny. I've seen some very entertaining spam
I get about 200 emails a day, I post all over the place and use my real email address, and I maybe get 1 spam a week, its not a problem.
My favorite trick however is finding 2 autoresponders and hooking them up into a mail loop.
Esperandi
Well, the legal precedent set back in BBS days would say that it would be illegal to send spam inside of Colorado to anywhere. If the server is in CO, the spam is ilegal, if not, its not. If you download porn that's obscene by your "community standards", you can't do anything about it unless it's obscene where it was sent from.
This is why internet taxation could really fuck things up legally. If the law stays like this, every e-commerce server moves to India or some islands or something and we lose a TON of jobs or they make an exception to this legal precedent and we have to rewrite all the laws based on it which includes the mailorder laws they were based on. So then we have to change all the mailorder laws and tax that too.
Esperandi
You'd still have to buy the games. And if you get someone to hack the code for you to remove the copy protection, you will do a great deal of harm all the way around. To Sony, to game companies, to Connectix, and to the open source movement.
Even if the idea of pirating every PSX game you can imagine makes you jiggle like Captain Kirk with a tribble down his pants, you should keep that private, it makes you look like a bottom feeder.
Esperandi
If they had released a version of their software which played copied playstation games, they would have absolutely no chance in hell of ever winning a court case. Right now they're fighting a court case almost exactly the same as DeCSS. Sony makes a proprietary player, these guys have developed a better player (it IS better than a PSX because you can run at higher resolutions than a TV can handle). Sony is arguing patent infringments, but they've lost this court case before to the people who make Bleem!, a PSX emulator for the PC. Both of these products can survive as long as they implement the copy procedures.
Just because they're not complete dirtbags hell-bent on letting people play burned PSX CDs doesn't mean they won't release it open source. Not everyone gets into open source so that they can get software for free.
Esperandi
While I realize this story is most likely not true (see the post that's moderated up at the top, I doubt anything will replace it), if it were true, everyones reaction who knows anything at all about emulators should be saying "Well, duh". There are probably not a handful of closed source emulators, but there are hundreds and hundreds of open source ones.
Being surprised at this would be like being surprised at a roguelike being open-sourced.
The emulation community is a good example of what *REALLY* happens with open source stuff. Linux is really a big freak in the open source world, 99% of other open source projects release their code to no avail and are never improved upon and their code is never used to create variant software. One emulator, SNES9x, was railed against for having closed source. Everyone shouted that as soon as the source was released, the pieces of the SNES that were not emulated yet would be within days. The source code has been released for around 2 years now and no one has modified it save the 2 original authors. It's a perfect example of what happens in most open source projects, there is an element of risk thrown in with open sourcing your software. Sure, all bugs are shallow with enough eyes, but wheres the guarantee those eyes will show up or that people more competent in the subject than the original authors won't want to start over from scratch and do it themselves? More often the latter happens than anything else. They see someone did something cool and decides to do it themselves in a different way and they improve on it in that way... same thing that happens in the closed source world.
Esperandi
ahh, but naming your software "windows 2000" or things like that would be illegal. Naming it Linux would not be (since the trademark only applies to computer operating systems and nothing else at all), but those other names are copyrighted for just about every form of software in existence. Well, maybe not apache, I honestly have no knowledge of its trademark status...
Esperandi