Textmode Quake 2

Artemis writes: "Following the Quake 2 source code release under the GPL, here's the follow-up of the famous ttyquake, it's a text mode Quake II called aaquake2 which has just been released. Time for more 3d text mode gaming fun! The site includes screenshots for those of you who haven't seen Quake-turned-Text before."

Example for mandatory open sourcing

[ShieldWolf]

This gives us an interesting example of what Lawrence Lessig suggested earlier: mandatory source code release after a set period of time for software, which follows a reasonably short period of exclusivity.

This guys speech, as weird and freaky as it is ;), would have not have come to light if Quake II had not been open-sourced after it ceased to become cutting-edge technology. By releasing the code after a reasonable period of time Carmack has given us a golden lesson in copyright. By putting the source in more hands we get more speech and interesting ideas put into the public domain, this is the kinda of thing closed source and excessively long copyright terms deny, e.g. Looking forward to David Fincher's Catcher in The Rye? Keep waiting, that book will still be in copyright over 70 years from now, and he will be long dead.

-Shieldwolf

PS - of course I know the software is still under copyright, e.g. GPL via Id Software, I merely mean that it is gives you an IDEA of how this could work.

Next logical step...

[oldmildog]

Excellent! Does this now mean that Quake 2 can be used as a BBS door game [slashdot.org]? Where's my list of phone numbers... is Telenet still around? It's 7,E,1, right?

Re:Example for mandatory open sourcing

[j-pimp]

Most copyrighted software isn't intended to be put into the public domain anyway.
United States Constitution, atricle one section 8 states:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; ...
Now IANAL, so take the following as my personal educated opinion.
The purpose of intellectual property law was originally intended by our founding Fathers to server two purposes. The first, is to allow artists and inventors exclusive rights to use there works for the pursuit of profit. This is to encourage and reward successful R&D. The second, is to provide through these same mechanisms, now knows as patenting and copyright, assurance that in a reasonable amount of time such IP is put in the public domain. IP laws were originally designed so information got into the public domain regardless of what the authors intended.

Criminalizing secrets

[volpe]

MANDATORY source code release? You want to make it a crime to keep your own information secret for as long as you choose, if that information happens to be source code? Why stop there? Here's a few other things we can make subject to mandatory release after a set period of time:

1. Your PIN
2. Your PGP key and passphrase
3. Your diary
4. Any recorded discussions between you and your attorney.
5. Your complete medical history.

The government is obtrusive enough as it is. I don't want the government to be able to force anyone to release information that they don't want to, just because some arbitrarily chosen timer has run out.

Re:Criminalizing secrets

[nathanh]

The government is obtrusive enough as it is.

But copyright only exists because the government intrudes. If the government didn't intrude then we'd have the situation of 200 years ago where people were copying data freely, much to the annoyance of the authors and publishers. If anything, the poster you were responding to was asking that the government intrudes less.

I don't want the government to be able to force anyone to release information that they don't want to

And nobody was asking them too. You seem to have confused copyright with privacy.

Re:Criminalizing secrets

[Electrum]

In this context, if Microsoft wanted to stop selling Win 3.1, we should require that they make the code public domain (excluding any stuff owned by third parties that Microsoft was licensing). This should also be a requirement if the company goes bankrupt.

An shorter limit on software copyrights makes sense, but forcing the release of source code does not. For example, a large amount of Win 3.1 code might be used in Win 95. Forcing them to release the source could compromise a current product. And your licensing issue brings up a good point. Who is going to go through the code to determine who owns what? How many man hours would that take for a large product? What if know one remaining at the company knows? This is a big factor in the open sourcing of many programs. The Open Watcom project is a good example of this. The original DOOM used a licensed library for sound on DOS, so they couldn't release that, even though the rest of the source was released.

Re:Criminalizing secrets

[nick_burns]

This is the same theory behind patents. You tell the government how your product works and you're guaranteed that for a certain length of time only you can sell it. When it expires, it's public domain for usage (It's actually public domain information from the start). Patents weren't created just to allow inventors to profit, but to allow anyone access to information and use it after a certain amount of time. But a copyright shouldn't necessarily expire, or it should have a really long life. Otherwise, anyone would be allowed to publish and sell books once they became, say, 50 years old. What is needed is a new copyright system. One where once a product is deemed obsolete or unsupported, anyone can do what they want with it.