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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
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...
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/
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!
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.
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.
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)
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]
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.
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.
Well the graphical assets and the rights are probably owned by Atari.
However, check out Spring open source engine. It was developed to run Total Annihilation, but expanded to be quite an impressive RTS engine in its own right.
Perhaps if enough interest, someone will champion porting TA: Kingdoms assets to run under Spring.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'll say this: I've bought games on GOG.com that I could turn around and pull off of my shelf. Why? Well, generally a) for the convenience of having a nice, all in one installer rather than, say, floppies or old scratched up CDs or whatever, and b) the work of setting up DosBox, getting rid of nonfunctional copy protection, and all that jazz is done.
The only thing I'd change is to make games more amenable to custom DosBoxing. Wing Commander, for example, had a great General MIDI score. But you can't activate it in the GOG version, as the installer/configurer isn't included, and the settings file isn't really human-editable.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.