To All BBS Software Authors - Please Donate Your Artwork To The People!
29 January 2008I’m a child of the BBS generation. Well, to be fair to all the grey beards out there, I’m a child of the late BBS generation (1993-1998). I have many, many fond memories of my favorite door games, FidoNet threads and meet-ups.
I frequented a local BBS here in San Diego, California called Dream Net. Dream Net ran a multi-line BBS software called MajorBBS and was sysoped by Blondie (Tara) and Reep (George). What made Dream Net so great is that being multi-lined allowed it to host some of the first great MUD’s such as MajorMUD and my personal favorite, Tele-Arena. Other great multi-user games included TradeWars 2002, Farwest Trivia and T-LORD (Tournament LORD, which was a version of Legend of the Red Dragon for MajorBBS).
Now over fifteen years later, BBS’s are all but dead. Those of us who used them try and contact old friends using sites like BBSMates.com. People have put out documentarties and books on the BBS culture and lamenting of those days when carrier signals screamed from little boxes. I believe as a whole the remaining BBS community is very co-operative in trying to preserve their past and makes sure the software, which easily qualifies as abandonware, doesn’t fall victim to the cyber ether to be lost forever on a floppy disk in a closet somewhere. A great example of this effort is The MajorBBS Restoration Project.
The MajorBS Restoration Project is a group of people ranging from hardcore software developers to enthusiasts looking to preserve and restore everything relating to the MajorBBS bulletin board software and related software. One thing people are running into is the legality and morality of using ‘pirated’ copies of software that is no longer for sale or the parent companies no longer exist. I have found myself in the same situation and began to dabble in MajorBBS reverse engineering in order to make the modules I wished to use for my own private purposes, functional.
For the most part, previous license holders for MajorBBS software have come forward and donated their source code, which represents thousands of hours in hard work and labor, to the community for preservation and continued development by enthusiasts. An example of this would be M.B. Murdock & Associates and their MajorBBS game Galactic Empire. As a company, they closed their doors in 1996 due to the decline in BBS sales, but in 2002 Mike Murdock released the source code for the Galactic Empires MajorBBS module under the GPL license.
There have been a few software vendors who have been known to protect the MajorBBS modules they’ve developed either as a corporation, or as an individual developer who ran his own business during this period. Part of me, as a software developer myself, can understand that you might not want to just give out the source code to something you’ve worked so hard on. Lord knows I don’t go around handing out my own 
But some of these people actually go as far to being legal action against individuals who are running ‘pirated’ copies of their software, fifteen years after it was released.
I’m not saying that it justifies piracy, but I think legally if I can prove:
- The software is over a certain age (perhaps ten+ years)
- The originating company no longer exists, or
- The company does exist but will no longer sell copies of the software
Then, aren’t they just using their old software as bait to perhaps lure users into a lawsuit for pirating software that was impossible to purchase by legal means.
What I would love to see is a movement to simply preserve the past. My past. Millions of people’s pasts. Let’s try to come together using projects like the MajorBBS Restoration Project or others of it’s type, and get those programs we all love and remember back in the open before they’re lost forever! Even a simple keygen that would take a software author a few hours to package and release could help many, many people.
3 Responses to “To All BBS Software Authors - Please Donate Your Artwork To The People!”
June 27th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Bread DUDE!
Let me first say thank you for Archery, The Casino, DS-DOS, Distant Places, and Oltima 2k. Your contributions to the community are much appreciated.
Did you ever get around to writing the MajorBBS reverse engineering doc? If you did please drop it on alt.bbs.majorbbs or comp.bbs.majorbbs.
“The MajorBS Restoration Project” is 100% correct it is a bunch of bullshit. Those fools are only interested in making a buck vs preserving anything. Don’t worry though we’ve been here since the beginning and we will be here after the BS is over.
The main moron Rick Haskall aka Questman aka Forceten (yes of iCE!) refuses to believe that Galactic Empires is open source.
I quote:
“Talon - the Major BBS / WG parts are most definitely not open source. There is an open source version of Galactic Empire for the DOS-based BBSes, however.”
See for yourself it’s on the Major BS restoration forum under “Developers Lounge” with the subject of “Looking for Galactic Empire”
June 27th, 2008 at 9:24 am
*cough* Why I have no idea what you’re talking about regarding those modules for MajorBBS. I didn’t contribute anything
I began working on some stuff but I’ll have to find the documents. They’re on a CD around my house somewhere. Basically I just rocked Win32DASM with HIEW. All you need is a basic understanding of Assembly and you should be able to hack away
I’ve been kinda out of the scene now for a while but I’ve finally got a good VM environment setup at home so perhaps I’ll begin fiddling with some things here and there
July 1st, 2008 at 10:29 am
David, I sent you an e-Mail using your GMail address.
Drop me a line and we can take this ‘offline’