I see. In that sense, the assets belong to anyone who's experienced them, so surely the moral rights must land on those who demand the thing gratis rather than on a money grab.

Mister Xiado wrote:

Remember the Shadow Warrior expansion pack that was found on a random CDR in a closet by accident? Let's drink to forget the Xbox development system that was destroyed out of stupidity.

There was actually a followup on that Xbox - the drive likely (keyword: LIKELY) didn't contain anything at all which is slightly relieving. The parts inside of the machine are likely framed on his wall at this point... because street cred I guess. 😵 https://www.reddit.com/r/originalxbox/comment … vrcy/?context=3

realnc wrote:

Don't forget that the source code is completely useless though. It's really not worth anything. We already know how it works and how it must look like, and other people have re-implemented the old Sierra engines already.

He's not releasing engine code, nor ever had it. He is releasing game code which is much, much more interesting:

if girl.is_hot:
larry.erection++

The code comments must be a blast.

I just tried to check the listing to see how much it has reached/for how much it was sold but I can't find it anymore. A google search led to "This listing was ended by the seller because the item is no longer available". Any ebay expert who can tell us what happened? My first thought is that the price was not high enough for nice guy Al, but I don't really know how pulling a listing and making it unavailable works on ebay. It may have been something simper and fair, for example right owners contacting him like many of us expected.

My guess is he backpedaled when he realized the promises had become oversold. They were historic but old and untested disks, not a source release.

Another possible reason would be that he got an offer outside ebay and cancelled the auction.

MMaximus wrote:

Another possible reason would be that he got an offer outside ebay and cancelled the auction.

Or he finally spoke to a lawyer. Or the bidders did and realized you don't own something if the seller didn't either. Or eBay lawyers stepped in.

The short story is you can't sell what you don't own. It's not like reselling a book - that falls under first sale doctrine. There was no first sale of the source code as it was never sold* - it remains the property of the owner.

The irony is he was probably forced to hand over all the disks for nothing to whoever owns the IP, whereas if he didn't try and profit from them they would have been none the wiser.

*technically it has been sold, over and over from what I understand, but not to Al.

The IP has been sold so many times I bet nobody can show a piece of paper in court that they actually own it. Reminds me of house deeds that were packaged and sold so many times nobody can get a real title for one anymore.

Codemasters owns LSL.

I doubt the guy wouldn't have contacted a lawyer before going out of his way to get publicity for the auctions.

I don't know...

This opens up a possibility of making perfect remakes

robertmo wrote:

This opens up a possibility of making perfect remakes

Pretty sure Activision (IIRC) went after him because of some source code they own, I don't think this auction was completed.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Pretty sure Activision (IIRC) went after him because of some source code they own, I don't think this auction was completed.

No. It was the Larry code, which Codemasters own. The Activision demand was based upon "shared code"; i.e. the systems scripts that was used in all SCI games. There was no interpreter source with what he was auctioning. Thing is that Activision's legal posturing was silly as these scripts for over 3 decades old games have already been leaked and/or decompiled, so the code he was selling would have revealed little more than comments and coding styles.