Derek Smart Lusting Rights To Freespace?

WMCoolmon writes "Derek Smart (of Battlecruiser 3000 AD PC space-sim fame) has started a thread on the Adrenaline Vault forums stating that he is looking into buying the Freespace rights from Interplay and building his own Freespace 3. (For those of you who have not heard of Freespace, it is a space shooter developed by Volition Inc. and Interplay in 1998, which has received almost univeral acclaim.) Discussion has turned particularly ugly following Derek Smart's post on the main Freespace 2 fan site. In addition, he has threatened to shut down the Ferrium Project (an open-source project meant to replace the aging engine of Freespace 2) if he gets the license. To quote Derek: 'I have FULL intentions of getting this license. If I DO get it, you and your teenny leetle friends on your Ferrous Oxide project, are effectively, shutdown because I don't piss around when it comes to IP properties'."

Comments

I did not think it was possible.

[DAldredge]

I didn't think it was possible, but he is worse than Theo (OpenBSD).

My goodness, he appears to have a chip on his sholder about 1000 miles wide and IIRC didn't it take years for BC 3000 AD to be patched enough to have the features listed on the back of the box?

Re:My first experience of slashdot bias

[carcosa30]

Just so you know, Derek Smart has been famous (as a dickwad) since maybe 1993 or thereabouts. He has a long and checkered history of attempting to do all manner of things, failing miserably, and then attacking his detractors, in court or elsewhere.

People don't attack a random game developer this way for no reason and for that length of time unless there's a good deal of substance to the rumors. Check out BC3000AD and you'll see what I mean.