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I have a hard time liking Tetris due to the fact that it's basically illegal to make a clone. The Tetris Company is very aggressive about shutting down any popu

I have a hard time liking Tetris due to the fact that it's basically illegal to make a clone. The Tetris Company is very aggressive about shutting down any popular clones. It seems pointless to invest energy in Tetris when they simply do not want any nonlicensed implementations to exist. The author of an older clone expresses this sentiment: > More importantly, the lead developer of LOCKJAW is a fan of free software, or software that the public can improve and share, as a means to protect the rights of users of computing devices. He does not share the belief expressed by Alexey Pajitnov, co-founder of The Tetris Company, that free software "should never have existed" because it "destroys the market." (Mr. Pajitnov explained further in a 2015 interview with Matt Barton.) But what really destroys the market is monopoly. > In fact, though Mr. Pajitnov and his partner Henk Rogers want Tetris to become an internationally competitive sport, as Mr. Pajitnov mentioned in earlier in the same interview, a policy against free software makes it that much harder. Imagine if there were a Basketball Company LLC that could sue a city or school district for copyright infringement for putting a basketball court with correct dimensions into a city park or school gymnasium. There are multiple competing suppliers of basketball and chess equipment, unlike software for playing Tetris. This is why Chess is a sport and Tetris is not: Chess has no owner. http://pineight.com/lj/ http://pineight.com/lj/

TuringNYC 6y ago
I'm pretty curious about this -- how are clones illegal? Is it via patents or trademarks? If trademark, what if someone renames the clones? If patent, how has it continued for 30+ yrs? Also, did they get global IP protection on this? If they have indeed managed this, i'm surprised they are not being cited as a case study of "what to do" in business schools and consulting firms!
- DivisionSol 6y ago
  I was working on a reply and wanted to do some research into verifying some things, but here is an article (there may be better articles out there): https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/defining-tetris-how-courts-judge-gaming-clones/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/defining-tetris-how-c... But the courts have ruled that making a game with the exact elements (tetronimos, ghost pieces, next-piece, 8x10 rows) infringes copyright. You cannot make a Tetris-clone without saying Tetris, without infringing on those elements. EVEN if you add additional functionality (the game in the article had powerups, etc,)
  - anthk 6y ago
    Every BSD except MirBSD has tetris(6) in games.tgz. If tetris(1) get purged I suppose a sudoku clone would fit the gap, or some ncurses Arkanoid clone.
    - cat199 6y ago
      and since we are talking operating systems, also emacs :)
- bitwize 6y ago
  Copyright. The specifics of Tetris, including the use of tetrominos and the dimensions of the board -- are protected by copyright which The Tetris Company has successfully defended in court. It may suck, but as The Tetris Company and the Blurred Lines ruling have shown, copyrights in the USA are pretty broad. In general, it is a violation of copyright to make a clone of a game; see Atari v. Philips in which the court found that cloning Pac-Man was illegal, despite the cloned game having completely different code, assets, and subtly different mechanics. This is why I believe Oracle v. Google will be ruled in favor of Oracle. In addition, The Tetris Company owns trademarks on the shapes of the tetromino pieces themselves, so even without broad copyright protection, all clones of Tetris would still be illegal.
GuiA 6y ago
Matt: So this is back in 2008 I saw an interview you had done it was posted on slashdot’s, I came across it. It was in a different language. You said something about free software and first I will run this by you and see if it is accurate or not. So they quoted you as saying free software should never have existed. I am wondering is that accurate that translation? Alexey: Yes, I am not sure I don’t remember me saying it back in 2008, but I could sign this work now. Matt: What do you not like about it? Alexey: Basically, if it is just a very small piece of software which young guy need to show off came up and tried to please his friends, that is fine. It might be free, but generally the good games as the result of very hard work of several people, I just don’t understand why those people should work for free. It never happens in this world you know? So it is very honest and normal work, which doesn’t make anyone immediately millionaire or anything like that. it is a hard job, which needs to be compensated and the price of, and smile small price of the game should make it. I feel it is absolutely normal and proper way to develop this stuff. So people don’t, somehow people are rigid to pay kind of 4 dollars for small couple or few and then do it for 10 minutes, but they have trouble to pay kind of half of this price and get 3 or 4 hours of really good time with the game. That is ridiculous. http://mattchat.us/?p=1021 http://mattchat.us/?p=1021
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  I remember how in the former Eastern Bloc back in the 1990s, there was a widespread dislike of Stallman-esque ideas of Free Software, probably because idealism of any sort had been totally discredited by the failure of the socialist regimes. And yet, many of the same people who insisted that Free Software was a daft idea because “creators need to be paid”, would not think twice about using popular commercial software like The Bat! email client without paying, by downloading a cracked version from a warez community.
  - notRobot 6y ago
    So many people don't realise that Free (Libre) software can be sold, and that there exist several ways to monetize Libre software to successfully support creators and Devs.
anthk 6y ago
You have a Tetris in every BSD install and OSX, and with any Emacs.
- bitwize 6y ago
  Emacs was forced to remove M-x yow because of copyright concerns. The same is bound to happen, sooner or later, to Tetris.

TuringNYC 6y ago

I'm pretty curious about this -- how are clones illegal? Is it via patents or trademarks? If trademark, what if someone renames the clones? If patent, how has it continued for 30+ yrs? Also, did they get global IP protection on this? If they have indeed managed this, i'm surprised they are not being cited as a case study of "what to do" in business schools and consulting firms!

DivisionSol 6y ago
I was working on a reply and wanted to do some research into verifying some things, but here is an article (there may be better articles out there): https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/defining-tetris-how-courts-judge-gaming-clones/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/defining-tetris-how-c... But the courts have ruled that making a game with the exact elements (tetronimos, ghost pieces, next-piece, 8x10 rows) infringes copyright. You cannot make a Tetris-clone without saying Tetris, without infringing on those elements. EVEN if you add additional functionality (the game in the article had powerups, etc,)
- anthk 6y ago
  Every BSD except MirBSD has tetris(6) in games.tgz. If tetris(1) get purged I suppose a sudoku clone would fit the gap, or some ncurses Arkanoid clone.
  - cat199 6y ago
    and since we are talking operating systems, also emacs :)
bitwize 6y ago
Copyright. The specifics of Tetris, including the use of tetrominos and the dimensions of the board -- are protected by copyright which The Tetris Company has successfully defended in court. It may suck, but as The Tetris Company and the Blurred Lines ruling have shown, copyrights in the USA are pretty broad. In general, it is a violation of copyright to make a clone of a game; see Atari v. Philips in which the court found that cloning Pac-Man was illegal, despite the cloned game having completely different code, assets, and subtly different mechanics. This is why I believe Oracle v. Google will be ruled in favor of Oracle. In addition, The Tetris Company owns trademarks on the shapes of the tetromino pieces themselves, so even without broad copyright protection, all clones of Tetris would still be illegal.

GuiA 6y ago

Matt: So this is back in 2008 I saw an interview you had done it was posted on slashdot’s, I came across it. It was in a different language. You said something about free software and first I will run this by you and see if it is accurate or not. So they quoted you as saying free software should never have existed. I am wondering is that accurate that translation? Alexey: Yes, I am not sure I don’t remember me saying it back in 2008, but I could sign this work now. Matt: What do you not like about it? Alexey: Basically, if it is just a very small piece of software which young guy need to show off came up and tried to please his friends, that is fine. It might be free, but generally the good games as the result of very hard work of several people, I just don’t understand why those people should work for free. It never happens in this world you know? So it is very honest and normal work, which doesn’t make anyone immediately millionaire or anything like that. it is a hard job, which needs to be compensated and the price of, and smile small price of the game should make it. I feel it is absolutely normal and proper way to develop this stuff. So people don’t, somehow people are rigid to pay kind of 4 dollars for small couple or few and then do it for 10 minutes, but they have trouble to pay kind of half of this price and get 3 or 4 hours of really good time with the game. That is ridiculous. http://mattchat.us/?p=1021 http://mattchat.us/?p=1021

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
I remember how in the former Eastern Bloc back in the 1990s, there was a widespread dislike of Stallman-esque ideas of Free Software, probably because idealism of any sort had been totally discredited by the failure of the socialist regimes. And yet, many of the same people who insisted that Free Software was a daft idea because “creators need to be paid”, would not think twice about using popular commercial software like The Bat! email client without paying, by downloading a cracked version from a warez community.
- notRobot 6y ago
  So many people don't realise that Free (Libre) software can be sold, and that there exist several ways to monetize Libre software to successfully support creators and Devs.

anthk 6y ago

You have a Tetris in every BSD install and OSX, and with any Emacs.

bitwize 6y ago
Emacs was forced to remove M-x yow because of copyright concerns. The same is bound to happen, sooner or later, to Tetris.