I don't have much to add except to say that I think this is a stand-out example of how companies and preservationists should work together and not against each other. The childish folks who are upset about this aren't familiar with the realties of either open source games perseveration nor the realities of being an IP holder. This is as close as we have gotten to the Good Place. I wish Atari luck on the re-release and I hope that anyone who's upset about it reflects on why they are upset.

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superxpro12 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is about as much as you can hope for tbh. More than a fair compromise.

Society has become quite 'entitled' to 'free' things. As popular as they are, torrents and free streams and emulation and clones of games in an open source lib are all stealing something. I know thats an unpopular thing to say but it a fact.

Now, those rights violations viewed in a larger context may change one's opinion on the whole, and I'm not jumping into that debate today.

Atari did a cool thing. That's rare in the corporate world today. Give praise where it's deserved.

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AuthAuth 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Are they really stealing it though? They only brought the IP 30 years later they didnt make it or put any work towards it. The openTTD community has easily done 100x the work to extend the game.

	▲	ThunderSizzle 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		This makes me wonder why squatter's rights are not a thing here...but I don't know much about the current and previous legal status of the open genres like OpenTTD.

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jscd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

First, I agree it's cool that Atari, with all its ability to completely screw small projects over, didn't do that in this case.

But, at the same time, I find it interesting that "emulations and clones" are considered entitlement (in a derogatory sense), but copyright protection is not. Before 1976 in the US, the _maximum_ copyright term was 56 years, and that would require filing for an extension from the default of _only 28 years_.

I think it's easy to forget that copyright as we know it is not set in stone. Historically, after 28 years, most works became public domain and that meant you could do literally whatever you want with it and it would not be legally stealing at all. I think we as a society have forgotten what it means to have a public domain.

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bigyabai 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> clones of games in an open source lib are all stealing something

If you're going that far, aren't proprietary games and software "stealing" open source libs too? I think your definition is a bit wonky.

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arvid-lind 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> ...all stealing something. I know thats an unpopular thing to say but it a fact.

This is an unpopular opinion because it is not, in fact, a fact.

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bombcar 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think it's interesting to look at your opinion (not you particularly, but everyone) and see if it would have been different if instead of "Atari" it was "Chris Sawyer".

If it would have been, then there's probably an inconsistency somewhere.

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zem 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think it's inconsistent to think that a person's right to their IP is worthy of respect but a faceless corporation's isn't. you can disagree, but it's not an inconsistency.

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bombcar 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is somewhat, because you then have to say you respect their right to the IP, but don't respect their ability to sell said right.

You can make that argument, but you need to actually do so and not just leave it unsaid.

	▲	OkayPhysicist 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The distinction is that people respect people who make things they like. That's good, and noble: no matter what kind of topsy-turvy economic system you live under, making stuff is a valuable (not always the most valuable, but valuable nonetheless) skill, because people need and want stuff. People who merely buy stuff to extract rent from it are, at best, a necessary evil. There's nothing admirable in rentseeking behavior. It's just playing the game. If we're hanging around a campfire in the paleolithic, the guy who figured out how to make beer is going to be everyone's best friend. The guy who won't let anybody drink from the stream because it's "his" is liable to meet an unfortunate end.
	▲	zem 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think the difference in sentiment is between "I created this and I would like to continue deriving benefit from it" versus "we bought this and we would like it to retain its value". again this is not about the legal difference, just how people personally feel about it.

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da_chicken 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Eh, Sawyer's career has left him a multi-millionaire, and Transport Tycoon is the foundation of that. If you've already made several lifetimes worth of income, I also don't really care about your IP rights anymore.

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zem 2 hours ago | parent [-]

i don't care so much about his IP rights (legal) as about the fact that this is his project (moral)

	▲	da_chicken an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Sort of. Releasing something into the world is, in a real sense, giving it up. At some point, you don't have ownership of it anymore. You're the one that created it, but you're no longer in control of it. Copyright being as extremely long as it is makes us think that making something once means we should profit from it in perpetuity, but that's not really beneficial for society to work like that. That's exactly why patents don't work like that. Remember, the purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of new works. Well, if you can create one work and profit from it effectively (i.e., your entire career), why would you create another work? That's just a waste of effort. That's literally the business model of IP holding companies. They don't create. They just own. They're rent-seeking.