UNIX Car Wars

[schoon]

Don't get thrown by the topic title, as this has absolutely nothing to do with computers or programing.

However, it does have to do with communal, open source projects. My thought being, if SJG isn't doing anything with Car Wars for a bit, what's to prevent the rabid fans from seeing what progress can be made on their own (in a totally freely distributed sort of way so as to not step on anyone's rights)?

I thought that the new Car Wars was a step in the right direction for a number of reasons:

• It played faster
• The matchbox scale was brilliant
• It was more simple, without being simplistic

All it needed was a decent vehicle design system and we would have been rolling (figuratively speaking ;))

IMO, it was just poorly marketed, and died on the vine before we got to any of the really good stuff.

Granted, I'm sure there are millions of opinions concerning the proper level of detail, and/or means to go about a VDS and the other stuff they didn't get to, but if it keeps me (and the other fanatics) off the streets for a while, well that's kind of positive already ;)

Thoughts?

[tomc]

First off, I'm not associated with SJG, so don't think I speak for them, but as I understand it, even an "open source", free, and freely distributed Car Wars project would violate their copyright, and they'd be forced to come after you or they'd lose some of their own rights to CW.

It's not a matter of whether or not any money changes hands, they simply haven't put CW in the public domain, so they can't allow other people to publish, distribute, etc. any CW material that isn't licensed and doesn't acknowledge SJG's ownership of their intellectual property, in this case Car Wars.

They do license game aids, etc. if you get their approval, fill out a form or two, and include the right language saying that SJG has all the copyrights to the game.

Here's their software game aid page:
http://www.sjgames.com/general/gm-aid-license.html

I expect they might do something like this for non-software projects, but it might be crossing the line on what they might want to publish themselves someday.

What says SJG?

[schoon]

Good point, and I've sent them an email to see what they say about it... I'll let everyone know when I get a response.

[schoon]

Well, sadly, they really don't like the idea, which is a pity. However, in the interest of keeping myself off the streets anyway, I'll be starting a new thread concerning what we would like to see in a new VDS.