Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 130 posts

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#41

Post by PavlovsCat »

dstroot wrote: post #7

Leisure Suit Larry was the first game I played as a kid that felt “adult” and “naughty”. Somehow that made it irresistible to my younger self. This brings back some great memories. Thanks for sharing!

As a German kid with nothing but a dictionary, and no clue who people like Nixon were, those questions took me some dedication and note taking to suss out by trial and error. It wasn't even the lure of the forbidden so much, I just didn't want to miss a thing, I loved Larry 1-3 so much. Still adore the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1om9GlBhn8&t=3m17s

Oh yeah! Ladies and gentlemen, Al Lowe!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLXSGPY4Pkw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUokHW32jL4

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#42

Post by code_duck »

djsumdog wrote: post #12
TheDong wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's still copyrighted and so cannot be legally displayed or distributed by the internet archive for another ~65 years (95 years from publication for copyright to expire). Many of us won't be alive to see this code legally. The copyright period could also increase again if the law retroactively increases it again.

Yea that's what confuses me. Is he even legally allowed to sell this stuff? Should he even still have that stuff?! This gets into sketchy legal ground. I wish he had contacted the German company he claims currently owns the rights and just asked if he could post it all up for free. It's not like it's going to hurt sales on platforms like GoG if they still have it up. He's already gotten some of the rights back for LS…

It’s like selling a copy of a book that you own. Unless you signed some sort of confidentiality agreement, there’s nothing that prohibits you from transferring the physical copy to someone else.

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#43

Post by WorldMaker »

djsumdog wrote: post #12
TheDong wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's still copyrighted and so cannot be legally displayed or distributed by the internet archive for another ~65 years (95 years from publication for copyright to expire). Many of us won't be alive to see this code legally. The copyright period could also increase again if the law retroactively increases it again.

Yea that's what confuses me. Is he even legally allowed to sell this stuff? Should he even still have that stuff?! This gets into sketchy legal ground. I wish he had contacted the German company he claims currently owns the rights and just asked if he could post it all up for free. It's not like it's going to hurt sales on platforms like GoG if they still have it up. He's already gotten some of the rights back for LS…

He has the right to sell the physical artifacts, its the IP laws that complicate everything.

Yeah, I'm not sure where Al Lowe got "German company". Sierra for a long while was owned by French company Vivendi, though. It's Activision Blizzard that bought all of Vivendi's game assets (not EA).

There might be a German Company involved in sublicensing LSL games specifically from Activision Blizzard? Most recent sublicense was Replay Games, I think? I don't think they are (were?) German either, but I'm not sure. There was a lot of weird drama with the LSL sublicense between Kickstarters and Activision Blizzard side projects, and I didn't follow it very well.

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#44

Post by yellowapple »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #4
aninteger wrote: post #3

I am interested but not enough to pay over $1000. I actually hope that some (well all) of this code makes it to the computer history museum.

If rare video game market is anything like I think it is, this will disappear into a jealous "private collector". You'll never ever see the source code because they feel that dumping or providing digital copies of the disks would degrade the value of their collection. And public suffers just a little more under greed and selfishness.

Is there a non-profit that would be willing to buy this stuff specifically for archival purposes if a bunch of folks pooled their money to that effect?

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#45

Post by WorldMaker »

WorldMaker wrote: post #43
djsumdog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea that's what confuses me. Is he even legally allowed to sell this stuff? Should he even still have that stuff?! This gets into sketchy legal ground. I wish he had contacted the German company he claims currently owns the rights and just asked if he could post it all up for free. It's not like it's going to hurt sales on platforms like GoG if they still have it up. He's already gotten some of the rights back for LS…

He has the right to sell the physical artifacts, its the IP laws that complicate everything. Yeah, I'm not sure where Al Lowe got "German company". Sierra for a long while was owned by French company Vivendi, though. It's Activision Blizzard that bought all of Vivendi's game assets (not EA). There might be a German Company involved in sublicensing LSL games specifically from Activision Blizzard? Most recent sublicens…

One possible German company that was entangled with Sierra IP rights might be the former Deep Silver (Koch Media), because of THQ? Deep Silver bought a lot of IP assets from THQ including possibly some portion of Relic Entertainment's IP, which was a Sierra published studio. Though that German company no longer exists as such, because Deep Silver was recently purchased by THQ Nordic reuniting more of the THQ IP in Scandinavia.

But also, that doesn't hold a lot of water, potentially, because it seems like Gearbox bought Relic's IP in the THQ bankruptcy, not Deep Silver.

Though all of the above does help illustrate why game IP rights are so complicated and byzantine and a lot of classics are languishing because no one properly understands who has the real IP rights.

(The "NOLF Paradox" as some of us call it these days. Which I just realize is funny because Sierra was the original NOLF co-publisher, too.)

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#46

Post by akkartik »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #37
all2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Already massive amounts of data have been lost to the grind of technology forging 'forward'. As we lose the information, we lose context, and without context 'facts' about the past begin to lose meaning to the present reader. History, and the stories we have, is/are mankind's most important asset. Without the context of our past as a species, we lose the ability to navigate into the future effectively (without c…

I think that raises an interesting problem - if you want to look back 1000 years the sources are scarce, and largely composed of the thoughts of the educated or the wealthy - people who could read and write and store these items. 500 years from now we're going to be faced with a totally different problem - if a user wants to learn about the year 2018 where do they start? Official documents will appear to be stored be…

https://www.amazon.com/Glasshouse-Charles-Stross/dp/04410150... describes a different problem. In the 27th century the 21st century is considered a dark age not because anything particularly bad happened but just because data archival technology took a big step back. Early storage media were far more fragile than paper.

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#47

Post by glwtta »

ru999gol wrote: post #21

if he were to actually care about digital preservation he would just put all of it on github even anonymously. But he doesn't so he doesn't. I know what Jason Scott would do.

Where does he claim to care about digital preservation? And I'm pretty sure GitHub would have to remove code posted without permission, anonymous or not.

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#48

Post by glwtta »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #11

Hrm....he says he hasn't tested it, but there was a remake of the game, and Lowe supposedly worked with them on it. You'd think they'd have jumped to at least examine the original source. Or maybe they explicitly decided not to check if the IP rights were owned by a different company than the one that owned the copyright for the code itself.

Why would they? Code from 1987 is of exactly zero interest to someone developing a game in 2013.

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#49

Post by icebraining »

paxy wrote: post #32
merlincorey wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, what's the legal status of this code? Apparently it is currently owned by a German entertainment company: "Realize that, while you’ll have my data as of the day of Larry 1’s creation, you will not own the intellectual property rights to the game, the code, the art, or anything else," Lowe says in the LSL1 listing. "Nor do I. The IP rights were sold over and over again, until they are now owned by a German ga…

Correct me if I'm wrong but he can't legally sell these disks then right (at least before wiping them first)?

He can, he just can't make copies of them. It's like selling an used book.

In the US, it's called the First-sale doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#50

Post by lathiat »

dstroot wrote: post #7

Leisure Suit Larry was the first game I played as a kid that felt “adult” and “naughty”. Somehow that made it irresistible to my younger self. This brings back some great memories. Thanks for sharing!

I gave a copy of Leisure Suit Larry to a friend in late primary school (I guess I was 12). His parent called my Dad and had a whinge and he basically laughed at them.

Ah, good times.

Post reply on HN