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Ask Slashdot: How To Get Old Commercial Software To Be Open-Sourced?
First time accepted submitter Optic7 writes "Many gamers have probably dreamed about the idea of an old favorite game or other no longer supported or developed commercial software being converted to an open-source license so that it could be updated to add new features, support new hardware, other operating systems, etc. However, this type of change of license seems exceedingly rare, unless the copyright holder itself decides on its own that it would be beneficial. The only examples I could think of or was able to find in a brief internet search were Blender (3D animation software that had its source code bought from creditors after a crowd-funding campaign) and Warzone 2100 (Game that had its source code released after a successful petition). With those two examples of different strategies in mind, have any of you ever participated in any efforts of this kind, and what did you learn from it that may be useful to someone else attempting the same thing? Even if you have not participated, do you have any suggestions or ideas that may be useful to such an effort?"
Google did open-source some of the commercial-wares - by acquiring the company
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Buy the rights, and then release it... Honestly, looking back, very few instances of these things happening have been the case...I mean, there are the cool companies that sometimes do it like the rare instances mentioned, and there's other companies that roll them out after their initial profitability has died (Quake, etc).
That said, short of buying the rights to the source, I doubt you'll get very far even with a petition. Look at us Linux users asking nVidia to fix the problems or opensource the blob...
ID Open sources most of their stuff after a few years. Further than that, John Carmack goes through to add comments, clean up code, and in the case of a feature that was settled after a patent dispute with someone else, re-implemented the offending bit of code prior to release. (Seem Doom 3 engine)
Cheers
Kactus
reverse engineer it, change a few lines of the code, call it your own and release.....it's worked before, right?
One further example is Star Control II whose source code was released by the developers. The result is known today as The Ur-Quan Masters. And, of course, Wikipedia has a whole category for formerly proprietary software...
Another example is "Abuse": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_(video_game)
http://www.glasswings.com/
I liked Triplane Turmoil, and old shareware DOS game, a lot. When I met the original developers by accident I offered to help port the game to SDL and managed to convince them to release it as open source: http://triplane.sf.net/
id Software has open sourced many of their games, for example DOOM 3 (see GitHub). However you still need the game data (wad, pk3, pk4, ... files) from the original media.
I can't answer the question either, but yet another game that has been open sourced that's missing from the Wikipedia list is Allegiance. http://www.freeallegiance.org/
The game was originally published by none other than Microsoft. Shocking, I know, but way back in prehistory (1999), Microsoft actually released some complete open source software. A game.
I'll pause while our older members grab their portable defibrillators....
Yes, Allegiance is open source and has enjoyed ongoing software development as well as a community-contributed texture "face-lift" to improve the look of the game. It has not made its way onto Linux because it was originally implemented with Microsoft's orphaned DirectPlay, and no one has been interested in replacing the entire network implementation. Its anti-cheat system, which was community-developed, is also dependent on Microsoft libraries unavailable on Linux. (Though possibly Mono has advanced far enough that's no longer true. Regardless, it's anti-cheat geared for Windows, so it's not especially portable.)
For those interested, it's an arcade-style space combat game (think Wing Commander, or the original X-Wing and Tie Fighter games) where two teams fight to control the arena. The added wrinkle is the addition of RTS elements, including a single human commander for each side who plays in RTS mode. Yes, it's that holy grail of games, an RTS/FPS hybrid. As it turns out, RTS/FPS is a hard game to learn and a hard game to play, so it has never enjoyed great popularity (contrary to the popular opinion of a million vocal wannabe game-designers on the forums of the Internet).
As with most small, insular Internet communities, the players tend to be snobbish and stand-offish to newcomers. Goes with the territory.
A software company might (and I emphasize MIGHT) be willing to open-source some old commercial software they own if it can be shown to be of benefit to them. Simply doing it for philanthropic purposes is unlikely to sway most companies, but if, say, a newer and better version of their software is coming out and the old, discontinued version people are asking for is of no threat to their profit margins, then that might be enough of a motivation as it would increase publicity, improve the image of the company (good PR is always helpful), and all the side benefits as well.
John Carmack open-sources all the engines he writes for iD software after a while, once the engine is no longer deemed commercially viable. It's unlike anyone will use the Doom 3 engine (technically id Tech 4) for example in a commercial game as it's been superseded by modern engines, and virtually no-one plays Doom 3 online so the threat from exploits is redundant. This is a great idea since it means projects such as iodoom 3 can be born to improve the engine and allow hobbyist developers to use it in their own games. I wish Valve would open source the original Goldsource engine used for their Half-Life 1 based games, but that will never happen as long as Counter-Strike is still actively played.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
A lot of folks wanted IBM to open source OS/2 after its sunset. One of the stated reasons why they didn't open source it, was because parts were jointly developed with Microsoft and others, who had joint copyrights. There would have been too many legal and copyright hassles necessary to get open sourcing done. Device Drivers were especially a big problem.
This could be true with a lot of other dormant software. Maybe nobody really knows what potential copyright issues are involved, and nobody wants to take on the liability by open sourcing it themselves, because it might cause litigation grief later.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Lightworks is an NLE (nonlinear editor, of video) which was recently open sourced due in part to its commercial decline and transfer of ownership.
Google releases a very small percentage of the code they buy up, compared to RedHat. Both do keep some of the code behind, but RedHat only does that for enterprise management tools, they throw everything else in open source. Google keeps their whole search engine, filesystems, Linux distro and stuff we don't even know exists in closed source.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Probably the most famous is SimCity, be the good will of its original author to the OLPC project.
Another oldy but goody, open sourced with the support of its author, is Sopwith.
reverse engineering =/= decompiling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#Reverse_engineering_of_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decompiler
Reverse engineered code is by definition entirely brand new code.
For small to medium software, the reason it isn't sold anymore is that it was probably not successful commercially. Find a way to reach out to them and see if they would be interested in releasing the code (and if they own the entire copyright).
I recently helped revive a 5 year old screenwriting software (http://www.trelby.org), which is a niche editing field, ruled by 200+$ alternatives (Final Draft/MMS). I work on this simply because this will more than serve the need of most of the market, and it's fun to program. I could do that because the original developer had opened it when it was not successful commercially.
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
Plenty of games, even old ones are not entirely inhouse developed, why reinvent the wheel when plenty have already done it before you. Hence they buy 3rd party engines and routines that they have no rights to open source thus dooming the game to never be open sourced even if the game developer would not mind doing so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3#Projects_based_on_the_GPL_source_release
Volition open sourced the engine behind the Freespace series of games. Now hosted at Hard-Light the development has been rather interesting, with new campaigns, and if you play the original games (if you have the discs) on the newer engine, it's quite spectacular.
It's not always easy for a company to just up and release the source code to their games, as many aspects of it may be entrenched in proprietary licensing. Physics, sound, rendering engine, etc. Entire sections of the code that can't be released, which makes much of the game what it is. It's hard to convince a company to spend resources going through their old source code, plucking out the code that can be released, and then letting it go. It might give them public good will, but it costs them money and the return could end up being very little.
The original Prince of Persia was recently open sourced after the developer found the once thought lost source code on a floppy hidden away somewhere.
I think this was the reason for the existence of the Public Domain, where copyrighted works were available royalty free to the public after 50 years. I'd really like to play Redneck Rampage. For that reason I'm really just sort of spinning my wheels until I'm 74.Of course, they could open source it sooner. I'm not sure if Xatrix still exists though. Or if any of todays paridigms will apply at that time.
Just a little nitpick: Public Domain is a naturally occurring state of intellectual property (as well as Trade Secret), not something that came into existence via government granting it.
Reasons why getting companies to open-source stuff is hard include:
1.They may not have the code anymore (or it may be in some archive vault somewhere and difficult to find)
2.3rd parry copyrights on the code (e.g. licensed game engines, licensed middle-ware etc)
3.3rd party patents (e.g. anything that supports any flavor of MPEG or e.g. the Creative Labs patent that ID hard to work around in releasing the Doom 3 source code)
4.Licensing (e.g. movie or sports tie-ins)
5.Cheating or hacking (publishing the code may make it easier to cheat or hack the program)
6.NDAs (e.g. the NDAs for platforms like the XBOX 360, PS3, WII or the hardware NDAs for things like PowerVR GPUs or the NDAs for anti-piracy solutions that may be integrated with the code)
7.They may still be using some or all of the code (or derivative versions of it) in current software.
8.They may not want to open source something old and not-sold-anymore if the result would be competing against things they are still selling.
9.They may not want to give their competitors an edge by opening up code that their competitors might want.
and 10.Cost to review the codebase and make sure that you are free of the above items
It depends on the company, smaller companies are more likely to be willing to either release the code or to do a deal (as happened with Blender) whereas larger companies are less willing to entertain either open sourcing directly or to sell the rights (either to the software as a while or to the codebase but not the data/game/whatever).
For example, it would be almost impossible to convince a large company like Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, Atari or Ubisoft to open source any of their stuff. (or in many cases to even support modding of their titles or share information/tools modders would need)
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/redneck_rampage_collection
... as an incentive to get the company to pick one that seems most compatible w/ their business interests, and publish it under that. That way, the old commercial software can be liberated, even if partly, and can either be developed further, or forked. Also, some old commercial software is fully functional, and if released, is good enough on its own w/o requiring any feature updates.
Even though it's a far cry, I would be excited for Minecraft to be open sourced. First of all, the performance issues could be fixed (by using a native language) and after that, the possibility for interesting modifications would be almost endless. Another gem is the first Rollercoaster Tycoon, which according to Chris Sawyer was coded in pure assembly.[1]
I've been toying with the idea lately. Create a Kickstarter-type website where companies could ask certain amount of money for a game/program and if the goal is reached they will release the source.
That is a space pilot multiplayer first person style shooter. A bit like a flight simulator.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I wonder who owns Total Annihilation: Kingdoms since cavedog became gravedog?
I used to love that game.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Are we expecting that the source code still exists, and that the build system still exists, and that anyone ever wrote down any instructions for how to build it (let alone document the design)? Sure *some* old games will be properly documented and archived, but the way of the world is that this won't include *your* favourite game!
I'd probably set up a website where all these games can be found in a nice, attractive setting that makes them look like the museum pieces they should be- nicely lit, oak frames, black velvet, that sort of thing. Use all procedural textures for the wood grain, velvet, etc, so that they remain resolution independent and always look delish. Get the credits engraved in said wood next to every piece of framed box art, and inlay those credits with gold.
Look for the dudes who did the work, the actual developers. And then approach the authors and explain that the site is going to be organized from top to bottom by which games have well-maintained source and which don't. Instead of rating them numerically, you'll just do it by turning the knobs on the degeneration on the procedural textures, so that the wood looks all rotted out, the inlay half-flaked away and over everything there's a thick patina of dust. So still looking classy but in an increasingly forgotten way.
Then put a classy old collection cup somewhere in the frame there. If clicked on, it'll prompt for donation amount and then animate a corresponding number of coins that make a satisfying clinky sound and animation as they drop into the collection box, and then all the collections are split according to ranking. And you can donate directly to games by dropping coins directly into little miniature collection boxes right next to the lovely framed pictures with the lovely credits. And they'll be sent to the IP owners. If the IP owners are confirmed to be split the proceeds with the actual authors, you'll give that picture extra sexy lighting, finer woodwork for the frame, a richer, lusher, redder velvet.
Give it a nice, pretentious name like The Gallery Eternal.
It would be possible to set up kickstarter auctions for games, after contacting the copyright owner. I would like to see MechWarrior 2 open sourced.
As a collector and researcher (of regular software, not games)...
Forget it. Most companies are not still around. If they are around, they're not the company they once were, and probably no one there even remembers the old software. If they are still around and remember their old software, they'll ignore you if you ask about it.
This is a great tragedy. It's technically illegal to do research into 1980s software, because the only way you can get it is by violating copyright. Something has gone horribly wrong when doing history is illegal.
Borland started releasing old versions of their software (not open sourcing them, just releasing the old binaries) but the usual happened: Whoever started this effort was quashed by the company changing hands.
WordPerfect blew me off totally when I asked about 4.1, 4.2, and 5.1 - I found these at a "pirate" site.
Will historically important programs like Turbo C, WordPerfect, etc ever be open sourced? Never. A whole chapter in the history of computing is essentially being lost. Only historians who know software very well and can set up emulators can even preserve this software, and only if they can find it.
Even shareware versions are lost to history. Some "shovelware" images of old shareware BBSes have old shareware, but disk space was tight back then and historical versions are gone for good because the new version always replaced the old version. Very difficult to find 1980s shareware for any package with versions released in the 90s.
Just pay the original developer(s) enough money to let them retire early with the lifestyle of an A-list actor or pro sports boffin. Then they'll be happy to hand you the keys to the coded castle and bid you good luck.
Hey, I said the answer was easy... the implementation is a bit thorny.
Give companies that open-source their old software a percentage of their initial investment costs back in tax deductions; the sooner they do it, the more they should be able to recoup as the greater the benefit will be to the open-source community. This can be paid for by leveraging open-source software in government functions to save operating costs.
Though in the case of software, developers should be required to deposit the source code somewhere. A binary blob in the public domain is still quite useless.
(+1, Disagree)
You could ask these guys how they go about it:
http://lostclassics.apple2.info/
This sig has exceed its monthly bandwidth allotment.
While not directly an answer to the question posed, gog.com's community wishlist ( http://www.gog.com/wishlist ) is one way of reviving old games. Not all companies are willing to open-source their creations, no matter how exceedingly good arguments you make, but they might be willing to revive these old games if there was a way of getting even one dollar of profit out of it.
URU in the Myst sequel of games has been open sourced by Cyan Worlds. See openuru.org.
While not truly "open source," I believe this story is in line with the original question of revitalizing old games for current play.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/01/maniac-tentacle-mindbenders-of-atlantis-how-scummvm-kept-adventure-gaming-alive/
Especially see the success developers had with the Broken Sword series. A useful answer to the question "do you have any suggestions or ideas that may be useful to such an effort?" seems to be "contact the original developers or current rights holders."
Nasty cold you have there.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
FYI, SC2 was also open sourced by the creators, can be found at sc2.sourceforge.net. In cases like this, it's a case where the creators that hold copyright over the work love the work itself. They see nearly zero opportunity to continue monetizing it, so they release the work to let it continue living. In many other cases, however, the copyright holder will refuse to do *anything* like this if there is no money to be made. Especially since a significant amount of money has been made in the console world reselling old games for new platforms, often with little to no work involved. In fact, a very significant barrage of requests intent on showing how loved the work is may backfire. While the intent may be to show a now unprofitable software is still well loved and warrants being set free to live anew, the business people note the potentially profitable interest that remains in a product that is already developed.
In the case of Blender, creditors observed what amounted to a failed commercial endeavor with nearly no hope of monetizing beyond the cost of support. They accepted a moderate amount of money to open source it rather than let it die. In this case, it was about a copyright holder with purely financial interests where open source was more profitable than not.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Commercial software can be libre sofware anyway, so there would be no need to "open-source" them in those cases.
What is probably meant, is "proprietary" or "user-subjugating" software.
I very politely asked the developer of the PalmOS 2sky astronomy app for this. In asking, I emphasized that (a) all I needed was his agreement to license under GPL2+ and a copy of the source code, that (b) I would do all the maintenance and support and that (c) I am an experienced PalmOS developer, and I think I listed my shareware and open source credits. He agreed, telling me that he turned down an earlier request. I thanked him very much for his generosity. I think my emphasis on how little work he would have to do with the release was important. Before release, I had to rewrite and/or use an open source library as an alternative for some SDK example code that was being used and that was under an incompatible license, and then update some of the data. He even sent me a dump of his old website, which I updated and put at open2sky.sf.net .
In this, the hardest thing was actually tracking down the author and his email address. Then there was a lot of gruntwork rewriting code with an incompatible license, but that was fairly standard UI code.
One companies said that there old ver of some software was not up to there standers but they no longer offer there old mac 68k of it and they say that downing it from a "pirate" site is illegal.
Gog.com aka goodoldgames.com is a site that takes old games and does a fantastic job of integrating dosbox into the installer and games .exe so the user only has to install it and then click play whenever they want to play a game. They take old and forgotten games no longer supported and they make them run on current pc's for a very small and reasonable fee. They also have NO drm, games can be backed up physically and most games come with a lot of extra digital bonus material for each game at no extra cost.
I am only speaking for games here but more companies should sign with gog.com since it allows them to make money off of old games that they arent making sales on any longer and it earns them cred with the hardcore gamers.
Its a real shame that all of the old classic games fade into obscurity while a site like gog is active. Developers and publishers should be encouraged to let their old games live again through gog.
The simple fact that programs being talked about here are 10 plus years old voids 3/4 of your arguments. The other 1/4 of your examples are rendered null and void by the simple fact programs can be released for all users without being open sourced, go look at gog.com it has dozens of old defunct products people can get and play again when unless they were willing to jump through 100 hoops never could before.
I'd really like to play Redneck Rampage
Redneck Rampage Collection is $6 at Gog.com, with soundtracks and extras. Carmageddon Max Pack coming soon.
You have to be realistic.
Commercial repackaging and distribution of back list titles through outlets like Gog makes a great deal of sense for the publisher --- and the player,
The open source remake is very difficult to pull off.
Due to its long development time Black Mesa has recently become notable for its delays, and dwindling updates on the status of its completion. The delays led to Wired Magazine awarding Black Mesa high spots on their Vaporware Of The Year list in 2009, and again in 2010.
On June 10, 2012 the Black Mesa development team announced that new "media" would be released once their Facebook page reached 20,000 likes. This goal was reached on June 11, 2012 when 8 new screenshots were released.
Black Mesa
Pathetic.
A good way to do this would be to have some sort of law whereby a company would be allowed the right to be the sole controller of the distribution of the software for a limited time -- say, a short period of a few years -- in exchange for requiring the release of the software -- source code, binaries, and all -- into the public domain at the end of such time. A law like this would, I think, greatly benefit the useful arts and sciences, given that the period of control was suitable short (say, two to five years).
A better way would be to require, by law, that any software released to the public -- for free or by sale/rental -- be distributed along with its source code.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
There's also Ryzom, a fine MMORPG which went free software (including artistic assets) after the company handling it went out of business. Its community picked it up and continues to develop it. They even released OS X and GNU/Linux versions. There's more information on Wikipedia.
Bullshit. Source code is a trade secret, and nobody is 'entitled' to those. The only legitimate reason for requiring a 'deposit' (escrow) of source code is that you are so dependent on it that it would cause you irreparable harm if it were no longer available. And in that case, you can get the software put in escrow, but it is going to cost you a fortune. Games sure as hell don't qualify for escrow.
read to fast. actually its worse the paragraph before makes it more clear that it is not free software. "As the author and copyright holder of this source code, I personally have no problem with anyone studying it, modifying it, attempting to run it, etc. Please understand that this does NOT constitute a grant of rights of any kind in Prince of Persia, which is an ongoing Ubisoft game franchise. Ubisoft alone has the right to make and distribute Prince of Persia games."
Anyone have contacts at Sapient (http://www.sapient.com/). As far as we can tell they own the rights to "ChessMates" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_Mates Still probably the best program for teaching chess to young beginners.
Would seem to me they could get a good tax deduction by donating this IP to a chess charity of some sort and the game could get back in circulation.
Bullshit. Source code is a trade secret, and nobody is 'entitled' to those. The only legitimate reason for requiring a 'deposit' (escrow) of source code is that you are so dependent on it that it would cause you irreparable harm if it were no longer available. And in that case, you can get the software put in escrow, but it is going to cost you a fortune. Games sure as hell don't qualify for escrow.
Source code is rarely a trade secret. Source code is obviously copyright protected, so if you had a copy of my source code, you wouldn't be allowed to use it without some license. And after spending lots of time and money on writing the source code, I obviously have some advantage over you by having the right to use the source code, and you don't.
But for source code to be a trade secret, I would need to have a commercial advantage over you by the fact that I can see the source code, and you can't. That is in many situations not the case.
Software acquired by some corporations is done so under certain contract terms. Among these is often a requirement to place source code, documentation and IP rights into escrow. Should the vendor go out of business or fail to provide contractually required maintenance, the customer would be given the escrowed property.
Just have these powerful customers revise their contract language to have that s/w released from escrow into the public domain. The customer still gets their hands on the source, plus the possibility of a larger community pitching in to support the orphaned product.
Have gnu, will travel.
For games, there is already a site working on getting old products open-sourced: liberatedgames.com. They don't update super often but they do seem to still be active.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Would you be interested in a BBC/Acorn-compatible BASIC interpreter? There is a non-distributable source module for the floating point operations, as that was licenced from Zortech.
I think he's referring to "trademark", not "copyright", there. He's saying "this code is effectively public domain, but the Prince of Persia trademark is still owned by Ubisoft". So you could modify the game however you want, but you cannot release it as a Prince of Persia game.
Although he is being very vague about releasing your modifications, especially commercially.
Black Mesa is not an 'open source' remake. Its a total conversion mod (remember back when we were allowed to actually modify games?).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mod_(computer_gaming)#Total_conversion
"Since most total conversions only share the engine in common with the original game, if the engine becomes Free Software, the total conversion can be playable without having to own the original game."
Black Mesa will require you to own at least one Source engine game.
Good-bye
I'm responsible for 2 very, very old games (Jumpman and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein for the PC) to be open sourced and released, but it's reverse engineered source code and not original. I contacted the original authors (although in the case of BCW, Silas Warner had passed away, but his widow gave me permission). These games had passed through so many hands by the time I got around to them that the rights had simply been lost to bigger companies who didn't even know they owned them. Not only were the rights gone, but the original source code was always long lost.
Hopefully someday the original source may materialize in some box of floppy disks in the back of a closet (see jordan mechner's recent discovery of Prince of Persia) but the odds of these things are so incredibly rare.
About all I learned was that this is tough to do, very time consuming, and it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission.
What would help is a drastic copyright term reduction; at the very least for computer programs (to be interpreted broadly that audio-visual elements etc. as part of it fall under the lower term). This removes all legal obstacles and anyone with access to the original source and/or reverse-engineered source is free to release it to the public. It should also be made clear that "all trademarks belong to their respective owners" is enough to circumvent any trademark disputes, e.g. you can distribute the source to"Donkey Kong" even though Nintendo holds important trademarks.
Perhaps one day the European Union will implement this and the North Americans wake up and demand the same. On the other hand, free-to-air satellite TV is ubiquitous in Europe (e.g. Astra satellites) and almost non-existent here.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Buy it.
The protection of "trade secrets", also known as "confidential information", is done by non-disclosure and non-compete clauses. Software is not automatically a trade secret. Software can be protected by copyright and patents. Software may be protected by certain parties releasing information by NDA or NC, but those not a party to those might leak, discover or receive such information.
you seriously just gave descriptions of blender and warzone 2010 on slashdot? Im sorry, but, just how retarded are you?
How about revolutionizing OSS drivers development with Kickstarter initiative for buying out the rights on the patent from HTC (which is the current patent holder AFAIK)?
Yes, I am aware of that. What I am saying is that if some company develops a piece of software in-house, and does not release that source code, it is a trade secret. That is their prerogative. Requiring them to 'deposit' the source code somewhere so that it becomes public domain is just silly, nobody is required to release their trade secret into the public domain. We don't require authors to 'deposit' an ascii text file of their manuscript somewhere so we can easily modify it when copyright expires. We don't require movie studios to 'deposit' the set blueprints, costume patterns, scripts, lighting direction, etc somewhere so we can easily recreate the movie when copyright expires. We don't require musicians to 'deposit' the exact score, recording levels, mixing instructions, etc so we can easily recreate that when copyright expires. Why should software be any different?
I asked nicely, and two years later got an email back declaring that http://code.google.com/p/steem-engine/ was now open source. The email was sent to about a dozen people, who presumably had asked nicely too. Unfortunately my interests had drifted in those two years, but it's great that what I wanted, the YM2149 emulation, is out there.
the old win95 game runs fine on linux with wine, even with IPX networking, but as opensource, it could get new level types and IP networking.
Woo, I finally got a slashdot submission accepted! The eighth time is the charm! /happyoutburst
Ahem. Actually, I wanted to thank all of you very much for your answers. A lot of good examples, insights, and suggestions, just as I had expected from my fellow slashdotters. If I or anyone decides to go down this road, I'm sure that this information will be useful.
If you're curious, the specific game I had in mind was Richard Burns Rally, which is generally considered to be the best rally car (racing) simulation ever released. From what I've read in your replies, it seems like I (or anyone else) may have to wait a bit longer before it may be feasible to pull this off since it may still be too new and active, and still have valuable code for the publishers to consider it.
If I really decide to pursue this, I may start with some even older but still well-regarded rally sims such as some of the titles in the Rally Championship Series or Rally Trophy.
If all else fails, I suppose I can always learn proper game programming and join an existing open source rally game project like Trigger Rally.
Thank you all again!
Rewrite it.
I'd like to see the original Red Faction open sourced. Many things could be done with it as an open source game. Besides porting, the geo mod engine could be improved to keep the player from hitting the damage limit wall. Best way to do that is to apply the damage back over a copy of the original map. It could also be the basis for a creation engine to all the player/user to add elements while in the map. Given how well it worked on limited resource machines of the time, updating it to make use of newer resource models while keeping how efficient it was at handling resources would make for some fantastic game play. I'd like to see Stargate / Guild Wars style portals added to jump from map to map in shared worlds.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Black Mesa is not an 'open source' remake. Its a total conversion mod
But that just underscores the team's inability to reconstruct the game's assets.
Art design, level design, character design, scripting (events and dialog,) animation, sets, props, visual effects, sound effects, vocal performance, music, and so on.
Rather than going through the pains of getting the source code released, you could do as FreeCiv and FreeCol did, and have a team recreate the game under GPL to run on todays machines. (I am assuming getting source code is like pulling teeth and slightly more difficult and would take longer than starting an OS team, so in the long run would be easier. Where as I can imagine the difficulty in trying to track down the right people within a company with the power to make the decision, then convince them it is a good idea, then to get the legal stuff sorted, provided the company who wrote the game still exists, finding if the company still has the source code somewhere, which it may not, then finding the source code which, in the case of a game 20 years old might be in some archive somewhere on old floppy disks, etc, etc).
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
We don't require musicians to 'deposit' the exact score
Yes we do. The copyright in a musical work (the lyrics and melody) is registered separately from the copyright in any sound recording of such a work.
But to formally *register* for copyright with the US government (separate matter from default copyright protection), copy of work is required.