3 ms·

Now Zork belongs to MS. Release it under MIT and everyone would win a great history of gaming (and the right to create new histories in the Zorkverse without wo

by anthk 3y ago

Now Zork belongs to MS. Release it under MIT and everyone would win a great history of gaming (and the right to create new histories in the Zorkverse without worrying). Spiritwrak it's a good example. In case of anyone says "text adventures have no future"... the folk lore from a distant past made Disney rich. The Arturian legends plus some samurai touches set into a futuristic space made George Lucas and Lucasfilms loaded, too.

skissane 3y ago
I think Microsoft might be willing to release the Infocom build tools and engines under an MIT license – by now they would be of purely historical interest, similar to open-sourcing MS-DOS 1.0 and 2.0. I'm not sure if they'd be willing to do so for the game assets (the room/item descriptions/etc) – it would remove one of the main legal barriers to a competitor creating their own game set in the Zork universe. The Fortran 77 version of Zork has long been available under a "non-commercial use only" license, so they might be willing to release the game assets under such a license too (or maybe a more modern equivalent such as CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-SA)
- anthk 3y ago
  We already have build tools for infocom against the Z-Machine, and interpreters themselves since the 90's. Having a public domain or MIT licensed Dungeon/Zork would allow to fix bugs and not worrying about licenses on any Linux/BSD distro.
  - skissane 3y ago
    > We already have build tools for infocom against the Z-Machine The TOPS-20 versions of ZILCH (and ZAP) don't seem to be available. The ITS version of ZILCH from MIT has been recovered, but (from what I understand) it is an earlier version, and the TOPS-20 version which Infocom used later isn't publicly available, and that later version had added features. In any case, its copyright status is murky, Microsoft could clean up that murkiness.

by anthk 3y ago

skissane 3y ago

I think Microsoft might be willing to release the Infocom build tools and engines under an MIT license – by now they would be of purely historical interest, similar to open-sourcing MS-DOS 1.0 and 2.0. I'm not sure if they'd be willing to do so for the game assets (the room/item descriptions/etc) – it would remove one of the main legal barriers to a competitor creating their own game set in the Zork universe. The Fortran 77 version of Zork has long been available under a "non-commercial use only" license, so they might be willing to release the game assets under such a license too (or maybe a more modern equivalent such as CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-SA)

anthk 3y ago
We already have build tools for infocom against the Z-Machine, and interpreters themselves since the 90's. Having a public domain or MIT licensed Dungeon/Zork would allow to fix bugs and not worrying about licenses on any Linux/BSD distro.
- skissane 3y ago
  > We already have build tools for infocom against the Z-Machine The TOPS-20 versions of ZILCH (and ZAP) don't seem to be available. The ITS version of ZILCH from MIT has been recovered, but (from what I understand) it is an earlier version, and the TOPS-20 version which Infocom used later isn't publicly available, and that later version had added features. In any case, its copyright status is murky, Microsoft could clean up that murkiness.