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Atari own all the IP and copyright. While OpenTTD is open source, it's basis is really that the original game was reverse-engineered, originally using the orig
by Closi 7mo ago
Atari own all the IP and copyright.
While OpenTTD is open source, it's basis is really that the original game was reverse-engineered, originally using the original assets, and then rebuilt.
Also all the map data etc is owned by Atari, so you need to have a 'genuine' copy to access all the levels etc.
- paxys 7mo agoWhat copyright? OpenTTD doesn't copy any code or assets from the original game. It is a ground-up rewrite. There is no copyright violation.
- sylos 7mo agoI read somewhere that it's not a clean room rewrite but rather it started off as a reverse engineering.
- designerarvid 7mo agoReproducing someone’s intellectual property and publishing it is exactly what constitutes a copyright violation. You can retype someone’s book with your keyboard, it’s still not yours.
- Sharlin 7mo agoReproducing the surface behavior of a program, no matter how faithfully, is not in itself copyright violation if it's a cleanroom implementation. But int this case it's not to write the new one, the developers studied (and manually translated to C++) the original code, not just the program's behavior. So this is more of a case of a derived work, like a translation of a novel.
- orphea 7mo agoReproducing is absolutely not a copyright violation. Otherwise emulators would have no legal option to exist.
- designerarvid 7mo agoThat is a question about which copyrights are enforced. Different question.
- ErroneousBosh 7mo agoAn emulator is not a reproduction of the thing it emulates.
- anthk 7mo agoLearn something new, dear GenZers: https://osgameclones.com/ https://osgameclones.com/ Maybe you all realize how much brainwashed from corporations yall actually are.
- iso1631 7mo agoLook and Feel in computers and how it interacts with copyright is hardly something new https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v03/03HarvJLTech195.pdf https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v03/03HarvJL...
- anthk 7mo agoAnd Sony vs Bleem (or the IBM BIOS reimplementation) already set a precedent so that doesn't really matter anymore. Look at Wine. Or Exegutor. Or DOSBox. All of them totally legal reimplementing either prior look and feel and functionality.
- iso1631 7mo ago> The code of computer programs are excluded from design protection, but visual aspects of software are very commonly protectable as long as they are ‘new’ (i.e. not a direct copy of anything that has come before) and possess ‘individual character’ (i.e. that the design produces a different ‘overall impression’ than anything that has come before) I'm no expect, but Chris Sawyer style games certainly provided a unique overall impression to me. Whether it needs to be a registered design or not I couldn't say, but it's not going to be cheap to find out. More recent battles have relied on Trademark and Patent law rather than Copyright, but "Look and Feel" is still a legal grey area
- anthk 7mo agoWine literally copies both the Win32 UI -needed to respect that for interop- , some of the kernel functions and Win32 which is just an API implementation and not copyrighteable per se. If not, we woudn't have GNU. Or Microsoft services for Unix.
- jorl17 7mo agoNote that, while it is a rewrite, it was done so through disassembling the original game, not via a clean room implementation. I find this particularly relevant given that the original was written (mostly) in assembly too.
- Closi 7mo agoAlso even if it is a ground up rewrite, the look and feel still matters. Try creating a 1:1 dupe of a Hermes bag or a Rolex and see how their legal team reacts (even if you call it an OpenBirk)
- anthk 7mo ago[flagged]
- bjt 7mo agoThe fact that these exist does not mean that they're immune from legal challenge. If the original creators wanted to sue, there are all kinds of claims that would have a decent shot in court (e.g. trademark, trade dress, design patents) besides "you copied our copyrighted source code." The clones exist more because people are being cool about it, and because there's not a strong economic incentive to challenge them. Those things can change at any time.
- anthk 7mo agoSony vs Bleem. They already lost this case in court.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- comex 7mo agoThat was a very different case. Out of the two claims, the only one that made it to appeals court was about whether it was fair use for Bleem to use screenshots of PS1 games to advertise its emulator (which was compatible with those games). The Ninth Circuit decided it was. But that's not relevant here. The other claim was more relevant, as it was an unfair competition claim that apparently had something to do with Bleem's reimplementation of the PS1 BIOS. But the district court's record of the case doesn't seem to be available online, and the information I was able to find online was vague, so I don't know what exactly the facts or legal arguments were on that claim. Without an appeal it also doesn't set precedent. If there were a lawsuit over OpenTTD, it would probably be for copyright infringement rather than unfair competition, and it would probably focus more on fair use and copyrightability. For fair use, it matters how much something is functional versus creative. The PS1 BIOS is relatively functional, but a game design and implementation are highly creative. On the other hand, despite being creative, game mechanics by themselves are not copyrightable. So it might come down to the extent to which OpenTTD's code was based on the reverse-engineered original code, as opposed to being a truly from-scratch reimplementation of the same mechanics. Visual appearance would also be relevant. Oracle v. Google would be an important precedent.
- not_the_fda 7mo agoIts not a clean ground-up rewrite. They dis-assembled the original binaries into assembly and started from there.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- Macha 7mo agoThere's two issues: 1. OpenTTD is not a clean room rewrite. It started by disassembling the original game and manually converting to C++ on a piecemeal basis. 2. As the game was updated, sure lots of this code has been rewritten. Almost certainly the majority. But has all of it been legally rewritten? Ehh... much less clear. This sort of process has generally been held to produce a derived work of whatever you're cloning, even if the final result no longer contains original code, hence why clean room reverse engineering even became a thing in the first place. It's probably fuzzy enough at this stage that you could have a long expensive drawn out legal battle about it (and I suspect we'll see at least one for some other project in the coming years with the recent trend of "I had AI rewrite this GPL project to my MIT licensed clone"). Would OpenTTD win? Who knows. Could OpenTTD afford it? Certainly not.
- mghackerlady 7mo agoCorrect me if I'm wrong but wasn't BSD in a similar legal limbo for a while? In that case wouldn't there be precedent for such projects to be legally fine so long as they've existed long enough and been heavily modified?
- Macha 7mo agoBSD was resolved by a settlement of BSD dropping a handful of disputed files and mutual copyright acknowledgement after it was determined that the company suing them also infringed in BSD’s copyright, so as precedent it’s pretty inconclusive
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- Ekaros 7mo agoIt might be improved and changed in many ways. But I have zero doubt it would not lose in court any argument over copyrights. Most reasonable people would tell that it looks way too close to original. And that would probably be enough.
- iso1631 7mo agoIf I were to create a new game from the ground up, with new artistic assets, and not an LLM in sight, with the characters of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader playing around on the Millenium Falcon, I would be breaching copyright. I'm not sure if look and feel of a game like Transport Tycoon can be copyrighted, but I wouldn't like to be against it. (I remember buying Transport Tycoon from I think Beatles, in Altrincham. I clearly remember riding on the front seat of the bus upstairs on my way to Flixton back in 1994 reading the manual)
- ikiris 7mo agoIt seems you don't understand copyright. The entire game is copyrighted. Not just the specific sprites. You can see the same effect if someone were to make a yellow short guy with metal claws and regeneration as a character.
- hrmtst93837 7mo ago[flagged]
- hrmtst93837 7mo ago[flagged]
- lstodd 7mo agoWhat levels? TTD, Open or no has no levels, only a map generator, and you seriously don't want to try the reimplementation of the original one.