The Homebrew Channel, a means of running unofficial apps and games on the Wii, has ceased development after it was alleged that key figures in the homebrew development community stole code from both Nintendo and other open-source projects.
As is the case with much of the homebrew software for Wii, the Homebrew Channel relies on the libogc software library, which had previously been found to contain large portions of code "stolen directly from the Nintendo SDK or games using the Nintendo SDK."
In a statement on The Homebrew Channel's Github, it is claimed that the developers behind it "thought that at least significant parts of libogc, such as its threading implementation, were original, and reluctantly continued to use the project while distancing ourselves from it."
However, it has since been found that the threading/OS implementation in libogc has been taken from RTEMS, an open-source real-time operating system.
"The authors of libog didn't just steal proprietary Nintendo code, but also saw it fit to steal an open source RTOS and remove all attribution and copyright information," continues the statement. "This goes far beyond ignorance about the copyright implications of reverse engineering Nintendo binaries, and goes straight into outright deliberate, malicious code theft [and] copyright infringement."
It is claimed that the developers of libogc are "not interested in tracking this issue, finding a solution, nor informing the community of the problematic copyright status of the project" and that when the team behind The Homebrew Channel filed an issue on Github, it was "immediately closed" and met with "verbal abuse" before being "completely deleted from public view."
The Homebrew Channel team has concluded that it is "impossible to legally and legitimately compile this software at this point, and cannot encourage any further development. The Wii homebrew community was built on top of a pile of lies and copyright infringement, and it's all thanks to Shakur (who stole) and the rest of the team (who enabled it and did nothing when it was discovered). Together, the developers deceived everyone into believing their work was original."
The code for The Homebrew Channel remains available but is currently real-only. The team says that there is no legal way to create new builds because they would rely on libogc, which contains stolen code.