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From: magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson)
Subject: Re: Amusing bloopers during development (spoilers)
Message-ID: <1992Dec17.163307.10867@pollux.lu.se>
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Organization: Theoretical Physics, Lund University, Sweden
References: <1gn5g3INNnr3@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> <librik.724573474@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 16:33:07 GMT
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In article <librik.724573474@cory.Berkeley.EDU> librik@cory.Berkeley.EDU (David Librik) writes:
>ptd2@po.CWRU.Edu (Palmer T. Davis) writes:
>
>
>>This is what happens at 4:30 AM when you've been hacking around the
>>insides of your new object run-time library for several hours and
>>accidentally mix up the calling order of a certain function:
>
>>COLOSSAL CAVE: An Interactive Fantasy
>>Copyright (c) 1993 by Palmer T. Davis. All rights reserved.
>>Copyright (c) 197mumble by Will Crowther and Don Woods.
>>Release 1 / Serial number 930101
>
>Is ADVENT copyrighted?  I don't think so.  

Unless explicitly placed in the public domain, all software is
copyrighted. I don't know if ADVENT was explicitly, or only
implicitly, placed in the PD, but I don't recall seeing any such
notice in the source of any of the versions I've seen. 

>In which case, you shouldn't be
>able to declare a copyright on it for yourself, either.  (Correct me if I'm
>wrong.)  If you're going to port ADVENT, and it's in the public domain, is
>your port is in the public domain as well?

I think Palmer is correct, though he may be wording the copyright
notice a bit unfortunately. If I've understood correctly, what he's
doing is *not* just a port, but a re-write of the game, which extends
the descriptions and available commands. 

Whatever the status of ADVENT, the new Advsys version is probably
different enough from the Fortran original to make it a new original
creation in the eyes of the law.

There is precedent for this, BTW: Gordon Letwin ported ADVENT to
MS-DOS, made some small changes, and sold it commercially as the
"Microsoft Adventure" (one of the very first programs available for
the IBM PC). 


All of the above said with the reservation that I'm not a lawyer and
don't know nearly enough about the law to be able to make pronouncements
like this. ;-)


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