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Abandonware is aproduct, typicallysoftware, ignored by its owner and manufacturer, which can no longer be found for sale, and for which no official support is available and cannot be bought.[1]
Within anintellectual rights contextual background, abandonware is a software (or hardware) sub-case of the general concept oforphan works.Museums and various organizations dedicated to preserving this software continue to provide legal access.[2]
The term "abandonware" is broad and encompasses many types of old software. Definitions of "abandoned" vary, but in general it is like any item that is abandoned – it is ignored by the owner, and as such, product support and possibly copyright enforcement are also "abandoned".[3]
Only 13 percent of allclassic games released between 1960 and 2009 are currently commercially available, according to the "Survey of the Video Game Reissue Market in the United States," published in 2023[4] by Phil Salvador for theVideo Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network.[5]
Examples of abandonware includeThe Simpsons: Hit & Run,Lemmings, the first twoCivilization games, and allNeed for Speed titles released prior toNeed for Speed: Hot Pursuit in 2010 (except for 2011'sNeed for Speed: The Run andShift 2: Unleashed which are also abandonware.)[6] As well as according toPC Gamer:The Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle-earth II,The Neverhood,Black & White,Midtown Madness.[7]
The availability of the software depends on the company's attitude toward the software. In many cases, the company which owns the software rights may not be that which originated it, or may not recognize their ownership. Some companies, such asBorland, make some software available online,[8] in the form offreeware. Others, such as Microsoft and Ubisoft, do not make old versions available forfree use and do not permit people to copy the software.
When no owning entity of a software exists, all activities (support, distribution,IP activities etc.) in relationship to this software have ceased. If the rights to a software are non-recoverable in legal limbo ("orphaned work"), the software's rights cannot be bought by another company, and there is no company to enforce the copyright. An example of this isDigital Research's originalPL/I compiler forDOS,[9] which was considered for many years as without an owner.Micro Focus, which acquiredNovell, which had bought Digital Research's assets, owns this old PL/I compiler, but has a more up-to-date PL/I offering.[10]
Finding historical versions, however, can be difficult since most shareware archives remove past versions with the release of new versions. Authors may or may not make older releases available. Some websites collect and offer for download old versions ofshareware, freeware, and (in some cases) commercial applications. In some cases these sites had to remove past versions of software, particularly if the company producing that software still maintains it, or if later software releases introducedigital rights management, whereby old versions could be viewed as DRM circumvention.[citation needed]
Occasionally the author of said software will detach from their creation (due to their death in some cases); in the case oftrialware, access to the full license could become unavailable after all commercial (rented) links expire, rendering the program impossible to access after the trial ends. This is the case of programs such asClickRepair.[citation needed]
In some cases, source code ofopen-source software remains available, which can prove a historical artifact. One such case isPC-LISP, still found online, which implements theFranz Lisp dialect. The DOS-based PC-LISP still runs well within emulators and onMicrosoft Windows.
The source code or executable might still be available, but the author is unknown or only identified by a dead email or equivalent, and there is no realistic prospect of finding the owner of the IP.
If a software product reachesend-of-life and becomes abandonware, users are confronted with several potential problems: missing purchase availability (besides used software) and missingtechnical support, e.g. compatibility fixes for newer hardware and operating systems. These problems are exacerbated if software is bound to physical media with a limited life-expectancy (floppy disks,optical media etc.) and backups are impossible because ofcopy protection or copyright law. If a software is distributed only in adigital,DRM-locked form[11] or asSaaS, the shutdown of the servers will lead to a public loss of the software. If the software product is without alternatives, the missing replacement availability becomes a challenge for continued software usage.
Once a software product becomes abandonware, there is a high risk that thesource code becomes lost or irrecoverable even for its original developers, as multiple cases have shown.[a]
One of many examples is the closure ofAtari inSunnyvale, California in 1996, when the original source codes of several milestones of video game history (such asAsteroids andCentipede) were thrown out as trash, some of which were later recovered.[19][20]
Unavailability of software and the associated source code can also be a hindrance forsoftware archaeology and research.[21]
As response to the missing availability of abandonware, people have distributed old software since shortly after the beginning ofpersonal computing, but the activity remained low-key until the advent of theInternet. While trading old games has taken many names and forms, the term "abandonware" was coined by Peter Ringering in late 1996.[22] Ringering found classic game websites similar to his own, contacted their webmasters, and formed the originalAbandonware Ring in February 1997.[22] This originalwebring was little more than a collection of sites linking to adventureclassicgaming.com. Another was a site indexing them all to provide a rudimentary search facility. In October 1997, theInteractive Digital Software Association sentcease and desist letters to all sites within the Abandonware Ring, which led to most shutting down. Anunintended consequence was that it spurred others to create new abandonware sites and organizations that came to outnumber the original Ring members. Sites formed after the demise of the original Abandonware Ring includeAbandonia, Bunny Abandonware andHome of the Underdogs. In later years abandonware websites actively acquired and received permissions from developers and copyright holders (e.g.Jeff Minter,Magnetic Fields[23][24] orGremlin Interactive[25]) for legal redistribution of abandoned works;[26] an example isWorld of Spectrum who acquired the permission from many developers and successfully retracted a DMCA case.[27][28][29][30]
Several websites archive abandonware for download, including old versions of applications that are difficult to find by any other means. Much of this software fits the definition of "software that is no longer current, but is still of interest", but the line separating the use and distribution of abandonware fromcopyright infringement is blurry, and the termabandonware could be used to distribute software without proper notification of the owner.
TheInternet Archive has created an archive of what it describes as "vintage software", as a way to preserve them.[31] The project advocated for an exemption from the United StatesDigital Millennium Copyright Act to permit them to bypass copy protection, which was approved in 2003 for a period of three years.[32] The exemption was renewed in 2006, and as of 27 October 2009[update], has been indefinitely extended pending further rulemakings.[33] The Archive does not offer this software for download, as the exemption is solely "for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive."[34] Nevertheless, in 2013 the Internet Archive began to provide antique games asbrowser-playable emulation viaMESS, for instance theAtari 2600 gameE.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.[35] Since 23 December 2014 the Internet Archive presents via a browser basedDOSBox emulation thousands of archivedDOS/PC games[36][37][38][39] for"scholarship and research purposes only".[40]
Starting around 2006, TheLibrary of Congress began the long-time preservation of video games with theGame canon list.[41][42] In September 2012 the collection had nearly 3,000 games from many platforms and also around 1,500 strategy guides.[43][44] For instance, thesource code of the unreleasedPlayStation Portable gameDuke Nukem: Critical Mass was discovered in August 2014 to be preserved at the Library of Congress.[45][46][47]
Since around 2009 theInternational Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) has taken a five-pronged approach to video game preservation: original software and hardware, marketing materials and publications, production records, play capture, and finally the source code.[48] In December 2013 the ICHEG received a donation of severalSSI video games, for instanceComputer Bismarck, including the source code for preservation.[49][50] In 2014 a collection ofBrøderbund games[51] and a "virtually complete" Atari arcade machine source code and asset collection was added.[52][53]
In 2010Computer History Museum began with the preservation of source code of important software, beginning withApple'sMacPaint 1.3.[54][55][56] In 2012 theAPLprogramming language followed.[57]Adobe Systems, Inc. donated thePhotoshop 1.0.1 source code to the collection in February 2013.[58][59] The source code is made available to the public under an own non-commercial license. On March 25, 2014, Microsoft followed with the donation of MS-DOS variants as well asWord for Windows 1.1a under their own license.[60][61] On October 21, 2014,Xerox Alto's source code and other resources followed.[62]
In 2012 a group of European museums and organizations started theEuropean Federation of Game Archives, Museums and Preservation Projects (EFGAMP) to join forces to"Preserve Gaming Legacy".[63][64] Also in Japan video game software archival happens since several years.[65]
In 2012 theMOMA started with archiving video games and explicitly tries to get the source code of them.[66]
There are also some cases in which the source code of games was given to afan community for long-time preservation, e.g. several titles of theWing Commandervideo game series[67][68][69] orUltima 9 of theUltima series.[70]
In response to the missing software support, sometimes the software'suser community begins to provide support (bug fixes,compatibility adaptions etc.) even without available source code, internal software documentation and original developer tools.[71] Methods aredebugging,reverse engineering of file and data formats, andhacking the binaryexecutables. Often the results are distributed asunofficial patches. Notable examples areFallout 2,[72]Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines[73] or evenWindows 98.[74]Windows XP would also get a community support via unofficial service pack, withPOSReady registry hack, as well asWindows 2000 receiving a fanmade extended kernel[75][76] For instance, in 2012, when themultiplayer gameSupreme Commander: Forged Alliance became unsupported abandonware as the official multiplayer server and support was shut down,[77][78] the game community itself took over with aself-developed multiplayer server andclient.[79][80][81][82]
With the new possibility ofdigital distribution arising in mid-2000, the commercial distribution for many old titles became feasible again as deployment and storage costs dropped significantly.[83] A digital distributor specialized in bringing old games out of abandonware isGOG.com (formerly calledGood Old Games) who started in 2008 to search for copyright holders of classic games to release them legally andDRM-free again.[84][85] For instance, on December 9, 2013 thereal-time strategy video gameConquest: Frontier Wars was, after ten years of non-availability, re-released by gog.com, also including the source code.[86][87]
Proponents of abandonware preservation argue that it is more ethical to make copies of such software than new software that still sells. Some have incorrectly taken this to mean that abandonware is legal to distribute, although no software written since 1964 is old enough for copyright to have expired in the US.[88] Even in cases where the original company no longer exists, the rights usually belong to someone else, though no one may be able to trace actual ownership, including the owners themselves.
Abandonware advocates also frequently cite historical preservation as a reason for trading abandoned software.[22] Older computer media are fragile and prone to rapid deterioration, necessitating transfer of these materials to more modern, stable media and generation of many copies to ensure the software will not simply disappear. Users of still-functional older computer systems argue for the need of abandonware because re-release of software by copyright holders will most likely target modern systems or incompatible media instead, preventing legal purchase of compatible software.
Some game developers showed sympathy for abandonware websites as they preserve their classical game titles.
[...] personally, I think that sites that support these old games are a good thing for both consumers and copyright owners. If the options are (a) having a game be lost forever and (b) having it available on one of these sites, I'd want it to be available. That being said, I believe a game is 'abandoned' only long after it is out of print. And just because a book is out of print does not give me rights to print some for my friends.
Is it piracy? Yeah, sure. But so what? Most of the game makers aren't living off the revenue from those old games anymore. Most of the creative teams behind all those games have long since left the companies that published them, so there's no way the people who deserve to are still making royalties off them. So go ahead—steal this game! Spread the love!
If I owned the copyright onTotal Annihilation, I would probably allow it to be shared for free by now (four years after it was originally released)
In most cases, software classed as abandonware is not in thepublic domain, as it has never had its original copyright officially revoked and some company or individual may still own rights. While sharing of such software is usually considered copyright infringement, in practice copyright holders rarely enforce their abandonware copyrights for a number of reasons – chiefly among which thesoftware is technologically obsolete and therefore has no commercial value, therefore rendering copyright enforcement a pointless enterprise. By default, this may allow the product tode facto lapse into the public domain to such an extent that enforcement becomes impractical.[91]
Rarely has any abandonware case gone to court, but it is still unlawful to distribute copies of old copyrighted software and games, with or without compensation, in anyBerne Convention signatory country.[92]
Old copyrights are usually left undefended. This can be due to intentional non-enforcement by owners due to software age or obsolescence, but sometimes results from acorporate copyright holder going out of business without explicitly transferring ownership, leaving no one aware of the right to defend the copyright.
Even if the copyright is not defended, copying of such software is still unlawful in most jurisdictions when a copyright is still in effect. Abandonware changes hands on the assumption that the resources required to enforce copyrights outweigh benefits a copyright holder might realize from selling software licenses. Additionally, abandonware proponents argue that distributing software for which there is no one to defend the copyright is morally acceptable, even where unsupported by current law. Companies that have gone out of business without transferring their copyrights are an example of this; many hardware and software companies that developed older systems are long since out of business and precise documentation of the copyrights may not be readily available.
Often the availability of abandonware on the Internet is related to the willingness of copyright holders to defend their copyrights. For example, unencumbered games forColecovision are markedly easier to find on the Internet than unencumbered games forMattelIntellivision in large part because there is still a company that sells Intellivision games while no such company exists for the Colecovision.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) can be a problem for the preservation of old software as it prohibits required techniques. In October 2003, the US Congress passed 4 clauses to the DMCA which allow for reverse engineering software in case of preservation.
"3. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. ...The register has concluded that to the extent that libraries and archives wish to make preservation copies of published software and videogames that were distributed in formats that are (either because the physical medium on which they were distributed is no longer in use or because the use of an obsolete operating system is required), such activity is a noninfringing use covered by section 108(c) of the Copyright Act."
— Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies[93]
In November 2006 the Library of Congress approved an exemption to the DMCA that permits the cracking of copy protection on software no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder so that they can be archived and preserved without fear of retribution.[94][95]
Currently, US copyright law does not recognize the term or concept of "abandonware" while the general concept "orphan works" is recognized (seeOrphan works in the United States). There is a long-held concept of abandonment intrademark law as a direct result of the infinite term of trademark protection. Currently, a copyright can be released into the public domain if the owner clearly does so in writing; however this formal process is not considered abandoning, but rather releasing. Those who do not own a copyright cannot merely claim the copyright abandoned and start using protected works without permission of the copyright holder, who could then seeklegal remedy.
Hosting and distributing copyrighted software without permission is illegal. Copyright holders, sometimes through theEntertainment Software Association, sendcease and desist letters, and some sites have shut down or removed infringing software as a result. However, most of the Association's efforts are devoted to new games, due to those titles possessing the greatest value.[96]
In the EU in 2012, an "Orphan Works Directive" (Directive 2012/28/EU) was constituted and is transferred into the members' laws. While the terminology has ambiguities regarding software and especially video games, some scholars argue that abandonware software video games fall under the definition ofaudiovisual works mentioned there.[97]
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Once the copyright on a piece of software has expired, it automatically falls intopublic domain. Such software can be legally distributed without restrictions. However, due to the length ofcopyright terms in most countries, this has yet to happen for most software. All countries that observe theBerne Convention enforce copyright ownership for at least 50 years after publication or the author's death. However, individual countries may choose to enforce copyrights for longer periods. In the United States, copyright durations are determined based on authorship. For most published works, the duration is 70 years after the author's death. However, for anonymous works, works published under a pseudonym or works made for hire, the duration is 120 years after creation, or 95 years after publication, whichever comes first. In France, copyright durations are 70 years after the relevant date (date of author's death or publication) for either class.
However, because of the length ofcopyright enforcement in most countries, it is likely that by the time a piece of software defaults to public domain, it will have long become obsolete, irrelevant, or incompatible with any existing hardware. Additionally, due to the relatively short commercial, as well as physical, lifespans of most digital media, it is entirely possible that by the time the copyright expires for a piece of software, it will no longer exist in any form. However, since the largest risk in dealing with abandonware is that of distribution, this may be mitigated somewhat by private users (or organizations such as the Internet Archive) making private copies of such software, which would then be legally redistributable at the time of copyright expiry.
There are alternatives for companies with a software product which faces the end-of-life instead of abandoning the software in an unsupported state.
Some user-communities convince companies to voluntarily relinquish copyright on software, putting it into the public domain, orre-license it asfreeware. Unlike so-calledabandonware, it is perfectly legal to transfer public domain or freely licensed software.
Amstrad is an example which supports emulation and free distribution ofCPC andZX Spectrum hardware ROMs and software.[98] Borland released "antique software" as freeware.[8][99] Smith Engineering permits not-for-profit reproduction and distribution ofVectrex games and documentation.[100]
Groups that lobby companies to release their software as freeware have met with mixed results. One example is the library of educational titles released byMECC. MECC was sold to Brøderbund, which was sold toThe Learning Company. When TLC was contacted about releasing classic MECC titles as freeware, the documentation proving that TLC held the rights to these titles could not be located, and therefore the rights for these titles are "inlimbo" and may never be legally released.[101] Lost or unclear copyrights to vintage out-of-print software is not uncommon, as rights to theNo One Lives Forever series illustrates.[102][103]
The problem of missing technical support for a software can be most effectively solved when the source code becomes available. Therefore, several companies decided to release the source code specifically to allow the user communities to provide further technical software support (bug fixes, compatibility adaptions etc.) themselves,[104][105] e.g. bycommunity patches orsource ports to newcomputing platforms. For instance, in December 2015 Microsoft released theWindows Live Writersource code[106] to allow the community to continue the support.
Id Software and3D Realms are early proponents in this practice, releasing the source code for thegame engines of some older titles under afree software license (but not the actual game content, such as levels or textures). AlsoFalcon 4.0's lead designer Kevin Klemmick argued in 2011 that availability of the source code of his software for the community was a good thing:
I honestly think this [source code release] should be standard procedure for companies that decide not to continue to support a code base.
— Kevin Klemmick, interviewed byBertolone, Giorgio (March 12, 2011)."Interview with Kevin Klemmick - Lead Software Engineer for Falcon 4.0". Cleared-To-Engage. Archived from the original on March 18, 2011. RetrievedAugust 31, 2014.
Thechilling effect of drawing a possible lawsuit can discourage release of source code. Efforts to persuadeIBM to releaseOS/2 asopen source software were ignored[107] since some of the code was co-developed by Microsoft.
Nevertheless, several notable examples of successfully opened commercial software exist, for instance, the web browserNetscape Communicator, which was released byNetscape Communications on March 31, 1998.[108] The development was continued under the umbrella of theMozilla Foundation and Netscape Communicator became the basis of several browsers, such asMozilla Firefox.[109]
Another important example for open sourced general software is the office suiteStarOffice which was released bySun Microsystems in October 2000 asOpenOffice.org[110] and is in continued development asCollabora Online,LibreOffice andApache OpenOffice, a broad range of enterprise level support options are available.
There are also many examples in the video game domain:Revolution Software released their gameBeneath a Steel Sky as freeware and gave the engine's source code to the authors ofScummVM to add support for the game. Other examples areMyth II,[111]Call to Power II[112] and Microsoft'sAllegiance[105] which were released to allow the community to continue the support.
The following is a list of the major sites which include thousands of downloadable Amiga games with permission of the copyright holders: Amiga Future, Amigaland, Ami Sector One, Back to the Roots, Borrowed Time, Dream17, Gremlin Graphics World, Games Coffer[
Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
Access to the Archive's Collections is provided at no cost to you and is granted for scholarship and research purposes only.
A cache of recently acquired video games at the Library of Congress turned up a true find: the source code for unreleased PSP game Duke Nukem: Critical Mass.
[Jobs] sent a one line e-mail saying it was a good idea, and it was done the next day," Spicer recalled. "Having an internal advocate is key.
With the permission of the Palo Alto Research Center, the Computer History Museum is pleased to make available, for non-commercial use only, snapshots of Alto source code, executables, documentation, font files, and other files from 1975 to 1987.
The end goal is to acquire the game's original source code, which can be quite difficult to pry away from secretive gamemakers. If that's not possible at first, Antonelli at least wants to wedge her foot in the door. "We're going to stay with them forever," she said. "They're not going to get rid of us. And one day, we'll get that code."
Thanks to an extremely kind donation from an anonymous former EA/Origin developer, the source code to the PC version of Wing Commander I is now preserved in our offline archive! Because of our agreement with Electronic Arts, we're not allowed to post recovered source code for download--but rest easy knowing that the C files that started it all are being kept safe for future reference. Our offline archive contains material that has been preserved but which can't be posted, including other source code and budget data from several of the games.
As we celebrate Wing Commander III's first widespread retail availability since the late 1990s, we would like to mention for anyone that we have the game's source code in our offline archive. We know it's frustrating for fans, who could do amazing things with this, to read these updates... but it's also in everyone's best interests to remind EA that we have the raw material from which they could port Wing Commander III to a modern computer or console. Just let us know!
As with Wing Commander I and Wing Commander III, we are pleased to announced that an extremely kind former EA/Origin employee has provided a copy of the Wing Commander IV source code for our preservation efforts! We can't offer it for download at this time, but it is now preserved for future use.
As we continue to mark the occasion of Ultima 9's fifteenth anniversary, I'm pleased to announced that the seemingly dormant Ultima Source Code Offline Archival Project (USCOAP) has finally borne some fruit: the Ultima Codex has added the source code for Ultima 9 to its offline archive.
Fan patches are those packages released by an Ultima fan to either repair bugs in a game that were never fixed by Origin, solve platform compatibility issues, or enhance the gaming experience.
Bloodlines [...] was essentially abandoned by its publisher after its developer closed a few months after release, but the fans have just kept on going, fixing things, improving things, digging up locked away extra content [...]
Einige Informationen zu diesem kuriosen Update-Pack: Da Microsoft nie ein Servicepack für Windows 98 SE (Zweite Ausgabe) herausgebracht hat, hat ein Programmierer aus der Türkei kurzerhand sein eigenes Servicepack für Windows 98 SE-Anwender erstellt. Es beinhaltet alle Windows 98 SE Updates von der Windows Update-Seite und weitere Updates sowie Verbesserungen.
The official multiplayer servers for Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance have been decommissioned for a while now, but fortunately [...] the community-driven Forged Alliance Forever has emerged.
Supreme Commander fans releasedForged Alliance Forever and gave the game the online client it could otherwise only dream of. I haven't played it much, but I still got a tear in my eye when I read about the extents these coders had gone to. There's nothing quite so wonderful to witness as love, and this is surely love of the very purest order. [...]SupCom guys resurrect a series whose publisher had just gone under.
Gabe: The worst days [for game development] were the cartridge days for the NES. It was a huge risk – you had all this money tied up in silicon in a warehouse somewhere, and so you'd be conservative in the decisions you felt you could make, very conservative in the IPs you signed, your art direction would not change, and so on. Now it's the opposite extreme: we can put something up on Steam, deliver it to people all around the world, make changes. We can take more interesting risks.[...] On Steam there's no shelf-space restriction. It's great because they're a bunch of old, orphaned games.
[...] [Good Old Games] focuses on bringing old, time-tested games into the downloadable era with low prices and no DRM.
Preservation of old games involves more than just an extra patch. The journey from dusty unplayable relic to polished, cross-platform installer is a minefield of technical and legal obstacles. The team at Good Old Games remain the industry leaders in the restoration of classic PC games, tasked with reverse engineering code written more than 20 years ago [...] "Source and game code is an extremely rare commodity for us," explains Paczyński. "Older titles have often gone through so many different hands that no one knows who has the original code anymore, or it no longer exists in any usable form." With source files lost forever, the team's only recourse is to retrofit retail code taken from a boxed copy of the game.
1) What exactly do you have to do to use Sinclair ROMs in an emulator, such as acknowledgements etc?" Amstrad are happy for emulator writers to include images of our copyrighted code as long as the (c)opyright messages are not altered and we appreciate it if the program/manual includes a note to the effect that "Amstrad have kindly given their permission for the redistribution of their copyrighted material but retain that copyright".
The saga of No One Lives Forever's resurrection has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs. [...] The problem was, it was just the trademark— no one was quite sure who held the game's copyright. [...] Digging into dead or forgotten IPs is tough work. These games came from an era when big-name publishing was the only model for success. Even though many of the games on this list were made by small, dedicated studios, they still relied on companies like EA to get to market. But as studios were swallowed or shut down, the rights of their beloved games often got lost in the shuffle. It's unfortunate that so many of them are still lost today simply due to the apathy of the rights-holder.
Looking Glass Studios closed in 2000, a year after System Shock 2's release, and the copyright to the series went into the hands of an insurance company. That left EA with only the System Shock name, but no actual development rights.
With the release of Homeworld 2 for the PC, Relic Entertainment has decided to give back to their impressive fan community by releasing the source code to the original Homeworld.
The release of the source code came in response to the enthusiasm of Allegiance's small-but-dedicated fanbase. Microsoft's Joel Dehlin commented that the development team has "been amazed at the level to which some of the Allegiance fans have remained hard-core. We're astounded at the progress that has been made at creating new factions, hosting new servers, replacing authentication, etc. It seems that Allegiance hasn't really died. With that in mind, we're releasing the Allegiance source code to the community."
Opening the app means that it'll get some much-needed maintenance.
BOLD MOVE TO HARNESS CREATIVE POWER OF THOUSANDS OF INTERNET DEVELOPERS; COMPANY MAKES NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR AND COMMUNICATOR 4.0 IMMEDIATELY FREE FOR ALL USERS, SEEDING MARKET FOR ENTERPRISE AND NETCENTER BUSINESSES
[...]The organization that manages open source developers working on the next generation of Netscape's browser and communication software. This event marked a historical milestone for the Internet as Netscape became the first major commercial software company to open its source code, a trend that has since been followed by several other corporations. Since the code was first published on the Internet, thousands of individuals and organizations have downloaded it and made hundreds of contributions to the software. Mozilla.org is now celebrating this one-year anniversary with a party Thursday night in San Francisco.
Sun's joint effort with CollabNet kicked into high gear on the OpenOffice Web site at 5 a.m. PST this morning with the release of much of the source code for the upcoming 6.0 version of StarOffice. According to Sun, this release of 9 million lines of code under GPL is the beginning of the largest open source software project ever.
[...]fans of the Myth trilogy have taken this idea a step further: they have official access to the source code for the Myth games. Organized under the name MythDevelopers, this all-volunteer group of programmers, artists, and other talented people devote their time to improving and supporting further development of the Myth game series.
[...]that no further patches to the title would be forthcoming. The community was predictably upset. Instead of giving up on the game, users decided that if Activision wasn't going to fix the bugs, they would. They wanted to save the game by getting Activision to open the source so it could be kept alive beyond the point where Activision lost interest. With some help from members of the development team that were active on fan forums, they were eventually able to convince Activision to release Call to Power II's source code in October of 2003.
