In the time it took me to write this, tvropro posted and it contained something I wasn't aware of, how M felt about 4Play back in the day. According to the post they gave it their blessing - now for M, I find this hard to believe

but it does tell me they didn't throw lawsuits at the original developer.
GC - I am not a legal eagle when it comes to these things, so I can't answer Yes or No.
In the early days of 4DTV a utility was written (4Play) that allowed interfacing to 4DTV (920) units and performing some changes to the memory, maps, etc. As I understand it, it was discontinued, that is, no longer developed, probably because the original coder found something else to do with his time. Do you know what I mean? - "I've written a utility that allows me to backup satellite maps - great!.....now what shall I do?", probably wasn't interested in making $$$ from it.
There's a whole bunch of discussion topics here and we could go back/forth all week without agreement.
Things have changed though, those things are the stigma that exists now over stealing PayTV. Hacking has been determined to be illegal, makes you a pirate, a criminal - heck no!
Hacking is the same as modifying, it, by itself, is not illegal. I hacked the lights in my house to run from a Home Automation Server - eek! Seriously though, if I hacked my neighbour's house, so I can get free utilities, well that's illegal, building the hack isn't, theft of service is the issue.
Another example is "JTAG" - the 4DTV has a JTAG port, M schematics exist, publicly, on the internet, you can build one if you so feel fit, if you kill your 4DTV - boohoo, sorry for you.
As for M - they historically don't play with anyone else, they have the power, the money and bull headedness to remove anyone who steps slightly out of line.
FWIW - why not, it is there I.P. - they're not in business to give it away!
What I don't understand about this most recent event is why they're doing it, it's almost as though by the development of the project someone's gonna hit the "open everything" switch, a test mode, something that has been buried deep that could be bad for M and their DCII business - is it still theirs, or G?
You like me and others will need to decide if we want to play with our receivers.