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from the how-many-copies-of-each-will-he-sell? dept.
Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection—then puts it on eBay
Al Lowe, one of Sierra On-Line's seminal game creators and programmers, has been sitting on a pile of his original games' source code files for over 30 years, fully convinced that they are worthless.
Gallery: Taking a look back at some choice Sierra gaming moments"I’m 72 years old, and none of my kids want this junk!" Lowe said in an interview with YouTube personality MetalJesusRocks (aka Jason Lindsey, himself an ex-Sierra developer and a friend of Ars). "Does anybody?"
Lowe is about to find out, as the developer has begun posting eBay listings for his entire source-code collection. (You read that correctly. The whole shebang.) The sale's opening has been accompanied by a MetalJesusRocks video (embedded below), which offers a 12-minute tour of backed-up files, original game boxes, original hint books, and more.
As of press time, Lowe has listed auctions for the first two Leisure Suit Larry games' source code, with bids already climbing (both well above the $400 mark after they went live). Lowe indicated to Lindsey that more games' code will follow on eBay, and this will likely include a stunning treasure trove: Lowe's other Leisure Suit Larry games, King's Quest III, Police Quest I, and Lowe's games based on Disney franchises Winnie The Pooh and Black Cauldron.A truly graphic adventure: the 25-year rise and fall of a beloved genre
What's more, Lowe also has original backups of his complete programming pipeline, including the Sierra utilities that converted plain-text, ASCII commands to interpreted code. When pressed about how curious users could peruse these disks' files, Lowe plainly responds, "It's a text file! Put it in Notepad."
[...] Lowe's listings clarify a few things: first, he has not tested any of these disks, and second, owning these disks is not the same as owning the legal rights to freely or commercially distribute their contents. "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 game company."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @10:23PM (1 child)
It's not a problem. If the copywrite prevents him from making copies and selling them, this is irrelevant because this copy was made in accordance with copyright law for several reasons.
The first reason: when he made it, it wasn't yet protected under copyright. It could be argued that per his agreement with Sierra the code was protected by copyright as he typed the characters, but even in that case any copies made pursuant to the performance of his job were with consent of the copyright holder at that time. We don't discuss these things when we write code because it's presumed (correctly) that writing the code we were asked to write was permissible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @03:00AM
The thing is he admitted that he walked into his job with a box of blank floppies and copied it.
It is probably a 'work for hire' sort of situation. It would be like me going into work and making a copy of my code at work. Then taking it home. Then selling it. They would take me to court and sue me into oblivion. Rightfully so too. It is their code. They paid very well for it.
Here is the rub though. Will anyone in the german company that now owns it give a flip about it? It is their code though. What Al is doing is fairly legally 'grey' (not really it is fairly established what happens). The only difference here is the amount of time it took him to do it. Plus it is for something kind of historically interesting. But more than likely not his. The first couple of games maybe are his. But the rest are probably not.