Ancestors

Toot

Written by The Last Psion | Alex on 2025-01-16 at 10:29

Question for 80s and 90s software developers that released games and apps through publishing houses:

Did you retain the copyright for your code?

A few people have very kindly offered me the code for their old Psion software, which is amazing. However, some of them have commercial releases through software houses, and they're worried that releasing their code as open source would cause them legal issues.

AFAIK (and, of course, IANAL) publishing works similarly to the music industry. A record label might own the recording, but they don't own the song.

I'm not going to go into the whole "no one's going to care anymore" argument. That might be the case, but it also might not. It only takes one vindictive copyright troll to mess up someone's life.

(P.S.: Boosts welcome!)

[#]retrocomputing #retrodev #retrogaming

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Descendants

Written by Bread80 on 2025-01-16 at 11:42

@thelastpsion Ive no idea how it would relate to software, but I’m predicting a future where copyright vultures but up the rights to memes and other photos which the photographer has been happy to share. And once they have rights they’re start making everyone’s life a misery.

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Written by Marcus Müller on 2025-01-16 at 12:16

@thelastpsion hey, also not a lawyer, but as most things, copyright is a national thing; you'll have to specify where these people are.

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Written by The Last Psion | Alex on 2025-01-16 at 13:09

@funkylab Good point. These developers are all in the UK, through UK software houses.

My question is more about the contracts that these independent developers had with software houses and distributors. Fire example, did those contracts stipulate that all copyright was handed over to the software house.

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Written by arclight on 2025-01-16 at 12:18

@thelastpsion Believe it or not, we're in an interesting situation with 50 year old sodium fire code. I believe it was developed under a federal contract back in the day, nobody has cared about this code since the early 80s, the authoring firm has changed hands 2-3 times since, but it's suddenly relevant now so the code's current owners are looking to commercialize it now that someone with money asked them about it. Thankfully they're being reasonable about it but that's purely by luck these days. The really irritating thing is that Argonne National Lab has put the work into recovering and modernizing the code and is now taking on maintenance responsibility for it after 40+ years of dormancy. The IP holder has done no technical work in all that time but now gets to set commercial terms for a code that was funded by federal money and effectively abandoned.

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Written by Mr Cool on 2025-01-16 at 13:21

@thelastpsion My guess is it all depends on the contract that was made with the publisher. Were the rights granted exclusively? For limited or unlimited time? Worldwide or for certain regions only? And which specific rights were granted?

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Written by Martin Gausby on 2025-01-16 at 15:09

@thelastpsion @doppioslash This story might be of interest to you https://boingboing.net/2019/11/18/horace-goes-copyright-striking.html

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