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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'."
How does he plan on shutting down the Ferrium project? The minute I read that, I instantly thought to myself that the fact that the source code for Freespace 2 has been available for some time which would be a huge dent in any attempt Derek tries to shut the project down. reveals that since the code for Ferrium isn't using any of the Interplay code it should be pretty safe. Of course, IANAL...
Hello, I am also a Derek - Derek Meek, aka "Kazan" amongst just about everyone who knows me online. I am the project leader of Ferrium (the game engine project), and the Network programmer for the FreeSpace 2: Source Code project (i also do other various things for the SCP).
So Mr. Smart posted his message asking if we were interested I stated simply and calmly "We will not accept anything from you, sorry but your work in the past has been less than impressive." (not an exact quote, but very close). He then proceeded to insult me in very childlike fashion, and I calmly corrected him on all his misinformation.
That's when he threatend unfounded legal action by saying (direct quiote) "Let me assure you of one thing that you can go to sleep with tonite. 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. You would do well to ask around. I've sued publishers for less and I have attorneys around the world, literally on speed dial."
This legal threat is laughable when it comes to the Source Code Project. The intellectual property he may be acquiring from Interplay does not include the rights tot he source code - they belong to Volition, Inc. and we have an unlimited license to do what we want with the source as long as we don't make money of it. Furthermore any game content we distribute is protected by the laws protecting fan fiction.
When it comes to my project, Ferrium, they're downright laughable! Ferrium is a completely new game engine I'm designing from scratch and having members of the community right the code for. Neither Interplay or Volition have any claim to the intellectual property therein.
This seems to be very typical of him from everything that i've heard of him.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!