I'm suddenly reminded of Betrayal in Antara. Man, that game was weird.
Did anyone say Kult - The Temple of Flying Saucers?
Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection
71–80 of 130 posts
Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection
#72Earlier 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.
Who gives a shit? Just upload it anonymously. Nobody even knew he had the source code until now.
Except it's not anonymous since Al will know who he sold each game to - won't be that hard to find out who the guilty party is.
Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think a better comparison would be owning the original manuscript. I might own the original manuscript to The Hobbit but that doesn't mean I can publish it.
Correct, you couldn’t copy it and re-distribute, but you could sell your original copy.
Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Software is different from books. The EULA that you implicitly sign may prevent you from transferring ownership to someone else.
There could be such a thing about books, it’s just that nobody does it. This guy worked for the company. He is not covered by that sort of license agreement, though definitely something could’ve been in his employment contract about the company’s property. Since he’s not claiming to own the code or the license to it, it’s physical property, not intellectual property. And with software, when it is covered by such a license agreement, typically you can do exactly this – sell your physical copy without claiming that you’re transferring any rights.
Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection
#75I wish somebody would make available the Civil War Generals code base. It's getting painful to keep a VM ready to be able to play it. I would gladly pay for a legal modernised version
Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection
#76I wish somebody would make available the Civil War Generals code base. It's getting painful to keep a VM ready to be able to play it. I would gladly pay for a legal modernised version
It seems you can play it natively with Steam Play for Linux, DosBox, or WINE.
Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection
#77Al Lowe, if you're reading, I am humbly asking you to consider putting all the source code you have for Sierra etc. games up to GitHub for all of us to {gaze|look|worship...}. Let the collectors have the pleasure of having it all on the original physical medias, but let the rest of us mere mortals have access to the essence. Edit: alas, it's pointed out that above may not be possible as IP is owned by someone else. T…
If he can't give the source away on github because he doesn't own the IP, then he can't sell it either. But he is.
Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection
#78I wish somebody would make available the Civil War Generals code base. It's getting painful to keep a VM ready to be able to play it. I would gladly pay for a legal modernised version
It seems you can play it natively with Steam Play for Linux, DosBox, or WINE.
Can you? I didn't think dosbox handled windows games. I've been keeping an XP vm around just for this.
Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
He may not have such rights. It’s unlikely he was legally allowed to have this copy of the code; he likely just kept the copy because he felt like it. If the copyright owner didn’t sell/transfer/contract this to him, he basically has a stolen copy. I do wish this copy is legally transferable; I suspect it is not.
Yea that's what I thought. This might have been made before modern NDAs and all the IP documents you handover when you join a tech shop today, or maybe Ken and Roberta W made some special deal with him since he was there really early on with the company? Even if that's not the case, there's a good chance all the original contracts were lost too. I mean, it really all depends on if Activision (or whoever currently own…
Vampires of corporate law will never miss this chance. Of course they will sue him to bankruptcy.
Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I was hoping someone would reference that. One of my favorite Stross books, and a decade since reading it I frequently think back to it and worry about this mass of data we’re creating and obsoleting each year.