That's interesting about the modified interpreter source. Yeah, I agree with you about the preservation goal. It would be a shame for what exists to disappear.
Who these days "owns" the original source (for games, tools, and interpreter)? You mention that a lot of it disappeared in dumpsters after Chainsaw Monday, so from the perspective of the owners of the games thereafter, the source was probably gone at that point, and obviously no-one worked on it since. So for those bits that ex-employees have held on to, who legally owns that now? And who could make a decision for us regarding "open sourcing" it? Is there anyone who can make that call now? It might be one of the only ways for ex-employees to show what they have, i.e. if something official comes out regarding its legal status. I guess it is unlikely to go the way we'd hope for. But what would the owners take into account when considering this? It's the games themselves that they'd make money from, and the characters and story lines that they'd look to make money from in the future. What would they lose by revealing the source of these (fairly old these days) games? There are already hundreds of walkthroughs all over the net, so no harm in people finding out how to finish the game or anything like that. A reasonable legal department might be open to allowing it to be openly available.
Is there a difference between the owners of the original source of the games/tools/interpreter, and the games themselves? What I'm wondering is whether the current owners of these games (is it still Activision for most of them?) still legally own that source code that presumably they don't actually possess (due to it being thrown out)?
Assuming that nothing official is said, what are our options?
