teefal
October 26, 2016, 2:17pm
1
Hi everyone,
I’m considering doing a faithful port of the original MIT Zork (Dungeon) in Tidepool . Trying to determine the rights.
This page says this, “Dungeon, the more or less public domain version of the original MIT Zork.”
What does “more or less public domain” mean?
Tim
teefal
October 26, 2016, 2:19pm
2
This page says, “Released to the PD by Infocom”.
teefal
October 26, 2016, 3:03pm
3
Wikipedia says, “When Zork became a commercial product at Infocom, Infocom agreed that if an Infocom copyright notice was put on the Fortran version, noncommercial distribution would be allowed. This Fortran version, and C translations thereof, have been included in several Linux distributions.”
zarf
(Andrew Plotkin)
October 26, 2016, 5:07pm
4
The older versions in the archive (including the Fortran version) say:
Dungeon is a development prototype of the game ZORK™, which is
available commercially from Infocom, Inc, on most personal computers.
Copyright on the Dungeon sources is retained by Infocom, and commercial
use is strictly prohibited. ZORK™ is a trademark of Infocom, Inc.
That’s not exactly saying that noncommercial distribution is permitted, but that’s how we take it.
Sslaxx
November 13, 2016, 10:31am
5
Didn’t someone ask about this at Activision (or for something similar - maybe the remake of The Witness someone did a few years back)?