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In early April 2024, online play and other functionality that uses online communication will end for Nintendo 3DS* and Wii U software. This also includes online co-operative play, internet rankings, and data distribution.
We will announce a specific end date and time at a later date.
Please note that if an event occurs that would make it difficult to continue online services for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software, we may have to discontinue services earlier than planned.
- This includes software exclusive to New Nintendo 3DS
That’s not what the person you’re replying to suggested though. They suggested that companies should release self-hostable server software when they discontinue providing the service themselves. In the age of containerized software this wouldn’t even be all that difficult in many cases
That’s fair enough, but I don’t think it’s very feasible. There are a lot of companies using other people’s copyrighted code in their servers that they don’t have the right to distribute, nor are they likely to ever get it.
I’d certainly like an “or-or” situation; either the company is forced to provide a fully hostable version for all online components or they’d need to set an expiry date. I just don’t think forcing companies to provide servers is going to go down well in most governments.
I didn’t say it had to be open source. Copyright is irrelevant as far as this topic is concerned - compiling code into binary is transformative. The only thing that matters here is patent law, and it seems easy enough to just make a law that allows non-profit infringement of patents for this explicit purpose. I don’t think there’s any legal roadblocks to releasing server software.