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Free The TA Source Code
JFL writes " A petition to request that the Total Annihilation source code's current owner, Infogrames, release the code into the public domain is currently in full swing over at the French site TA Forever.
" I recently picked up TA again, and played around with it - while the graphics are looking a bit dated, the design for the system is great - a very extensible design system, and one that you could build some interesting environments on top of. The use of height is something that was, and to a certain extent, still far ahead of other RTS ? games.
The TA site says the deadliine for the petition was 30th December 2001.
Oops.
Hogsback
IANAL, but public domain software has several legal issues that open the originator of the code to legal liability. It may prove prudent to request that they license their code under the BSD or GPL licenses, which limit liability.
Although I can't go into details (still under NDA after 6 years technically), we got bitten by this at a large software house not so long ago. Basically, some of our examples in the documentation were marked as "public domain" software and a third party began to redistribute the examples in binary form with added graphical interfaces. It turned out of the developers of this GUI had written his code on another company's time, and that company decided to sue us. Since there was no limitation of liability in our distributed source code, our lawyers had a harder time justifying our position.
Don't underestimate the bit of a license that goes something like this:
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED.
Asking Infogrames to "public domain" their source code is, in my opinion, uninformed and irresponsible.
As futile as it may sound, it is important for us all to contact our federal representatives and urge them to provide tax credits to companies when they release open source software. That would be a very good way to swing the economic incentives in our favor, and possibly even help out struggling OSS companies like Caldera and SGI.
uncle isaac
You know, even if the source code isn't released, Total Annihilation runs damn near perfectly under current WINE vintages.
I love this game, and I'm extremely glad I can run it in X. If you've never played it (and you run Linux), head to Electronics Boutique. You can find it on the shelf for about $4.99 last time I saw it. Then download, compile, and configure WINE, run TA setup, and voila! Runs fantastic.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
TA must have some very clever code to perform as well as it did on machines of its day, but that's nothing some open source developers working their asses off 12 hours a day can't do -- you can bet that's minimum the amount of work that Cavedog put into TA. It's getting artists to make the keen looking units, terrain, and explosions. It's getting a composer to write a soundtrack and a full symphony orchestra to perform it. OSS games tend to look and sound like ass because it's precisely the aesthetic appeal of the game that often gets dismissed as mere fluff -- forgetting that in the big picture, games themselves are mere fluff.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I have never heard of someone being successfully sued for a piece of public domain software being poor quality, without an explicit warranty, and I've looked pretty hard.
Can anyone provide a single example?
This is brought up over and over again as a reason not to release code into the public domain, but I've never seen any evidence that a disclaimer sent along with the initial release of public domain software is any less valid than one included in a licence such as the GPL. I believe it's a bit of licence folklore.
First thing: it is widely accepted that you don't need to agree to the GPL to use GPL software, only to distribute it. You don't even have to read it. That means you don't have to see or agree to any disclaimer of warranty.
Similarly, the end users of BSD or X type licenses don't have to see or agree to the terms. Under copyright law, having legally obtained a copy of software, by default you have the right to run it and back it up. Shrink wrap and click-through licenses are both somewhat legally shaky, but still a lot stronger than something you don't even see unless you look for it.
Furthermore, a case could be made that a copyright holder is more likely to be held responsible for defects in his work than a contributor to the public domain. Blanket disclaimers of warranty, especially tucked quietly away in a corner of a contract (especially one presented as "standard" or a mere formality, and not offering the opportunity to negociate), and in strong contrast to public claims, fall somewhere between weak and completely invalid.
Hell, the GPL still hasn't ever been tested in court. There are reasons to believe that releasing software under the GPL is putting it in the public domain, and it is just one test case away from being treated as such.
Picking a licence causes problems, too. The most important one is licence incompatibility: choose one, and you prevent the code from being used in projects using an incompatible licence, while public domain code can be included in projects using any licence I've heard of.
If the problem of liability is not a real one, then public domain is the simplest, easiest to understand, most reliable way to give people the full free use of your code.
Although I can't go into details (still under NDA after 6 years technically), we got bitten by this at a large software house not so long ago. Basically, some of our examples in the documentation were marked as "public domain" software and a third party began to redistribute the examples in binary form with added graphical interfaces. It turned out of the developers of this GUI had written his code on another company's time, and that company decided to sue us. Since there was no limitation of liability in our distributed source code, our lawyers had a harder time justifying our position.
You left out the most crucial part: What was their complaint? It doesn't sound like it had anything to do with merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, or any sort of implied warranty.
It sounds to me a lot more like an accusation of your company being involved in the unauthorized use of this worker's paid time.
NDA or not, if you're not willing to specify enough details to show whether and how your example is relevant, you shouldn't have brought it up. I think you're using your NDA as an excuse to make vague references to a case that doesn't apply.
it is, the community, with very little help from cavedog (the now-defunct developers of TA). We can make the game itself do back flips without the soruce, we can add units that lose parts, over heat, transform, can be upgraded (GKX), we can make entire new races, we can even use proper 3d terran software to make maps (bryce and terragen), we can do more than Chris Taylor (creator of total annihilation) ever dreamed.
but the engine is old, and it is starting to lose it's appeal even to the guys who have been playing since it was released (4 years ago), it's running out of supply at stores, it's hard to find, and most people don't remember it, very little new blood flowing into the community (which is about 1000 people). anyways, i've never seen a commerical RTS released under an open-source liscense, I think it'd be very interesting to see the results.
Hello. I'm Gamefreak from www.tauniverse.com After looking through here I've noticed that many people wonder why we want this source code? After all, who still plays TA? Who still plays TA? Thousands of people. After over 4 long years we still remain one of the largest RTS communities. There are tons of large TA supersites such as TA Universe ( www.tauniverse.com ), Planet Annihilation ( www.planetannihilation.com ), Annihilated ( www.annihilated.com ), TA Designers ( www.tadesigners.com ), Ultimate-Strategy ( www.ultimate-strategy.com ), TAMEC ( www.tamec.net ), and many more. Along with these sites are tons of hosted sites. TAU and PA alone host at least 60 sites, and there are many other TA sites independent from those mentioned above. You don't think anything's happening in the community though do you? Check the news at TA Universe or PA! We still have more news every day than brand new popular games that just came out! We want this source code because we have accomplished more than probably any other RTS community. After making over 1000 new fully 3D scripted units, over 5000 maps (at least), probably over 10 full races (who else can make races?), tons of third party programs and mods and so on, we are getting bored and want to alter the game engine itself. Our community has gone so far that we are making a full length TA movie at Annihilation Studios, a first person shooter in the TA world (called TA: Close Quarters), and the third party sequel to TA, TA: Flashback. TA:F will be fully 3D and so on, and it is also being made by Annihilation Studios. Just recently Infogrames opened up a TA forum for us (who knows why?), apparently after finally noticing we survived and thrived even after they closed down Cavedog and left us to die. (whoever claims he is a former infogrames worker is wrong, I've had TA since october 1997 and I know for a fact that cavedog was NOT dead when infogrames acquired GT). Anyway...anyone who still plays TA is encouraged to come to the above sites and post on all our forums, esp. TA Universe, the biggest one (still bigger than most RTS fan forums, believe it or not. Several hundred thousand posts and several thousand users..).