Source Code of Several Atari 7800 Games Released

jadoon88 writes to share a series of old Atari 7800 games that have been unofficially open sourced. "Remember Dig Dug or Centipede or Robotron? They used to be favorites when Atari's 7800 series was still around. Since the era of those consoles is over, and a different world of interactive reality gaming has taken over, Atari has unofficially released source code of over 15 games for the coders and enthusiasts to admire the state-of-the-art (because this is what it was back then). During those times, nobody would have imagined in their wildest dreams the games that Atari's developers floated into the gaming thirsty market and instantly swept across continental boundaries. But things changed soon after that and a company once regarded as one of the most successful gaming console manufacturers and developers faded away in the pages of our technology's hall-of-fame."

Great!

[ae1294]

Well this is really great and I thank them for finally releasing code from like 40 years ago but what does 'unofficially released source code' mean exactly???

Re:Great!

[Acapulco]

Then shouldn't it be "illegal" instead of "unofficial"?

If Atari still has the copyright on some of those games, then it would be illegal to do so, isn't it? Even when they probably won't sue or anything, how can I "unofficially" release the source code to, say, MS-DOS without MS suing (suEing? sp?) me?

Re:Great!

[hedwards]

Does that even apply? It's not the physical copy to which Atari has legal rights, they have the copyright to the code on the disks. And that's a huge difference, if that weren't the case then people would be perfectly free to copy disks as much as they liked, provided they could find one that had been tossed in the garbage bin.

Somehow I don't think that theory would hold up in court, well either theory.

Re:Great!

[osu-neko]

SCOTUS ruled that what you throw out is public property...

Right, but that just means the discs are public property (assuming the data was on disc). If I throw away a book, someone can grab that book out of the trash and claim it for themselves. However, the author does not lose the copyright (even if it was the author who threw away the book).

Just source code for proprietary software.

[jbn-o]

jadoon88 writes to share a series of old Atari 7800 games that have been unofficially open sourced.

No, but whomever wrote that headline is making a common mistake. The use of the term "open source" tells us that "open source" is apparently no more clear to people than what that movement tried to supplant—free software. While "free software" has an ambiguity problem, that problem is easily resolved by saying the "free" refers to freedoms to run, share, and modify the software, not a reference to price. "Open source" is also widely misunderstood [gnu.org]:

The official definition of "open source software," as published by the Open Source Initiative, is very close to our definition of free software; however, it is a little looser in some respects, and they have accepted a few licenses that we consider unacceptably restrictive of the users. However, the obvious meaning for the expression "open source software" is "You can look at the source code." This is a much weaker criterion than free software; it includes free software, but also includes semi-free programs such as Xv, and even some proprietary programs, including Qt under its original license (before the QPL).

That obvious meaning for "open source" is not the meaning that its advocates intend. The result is that most people misunderstand what those advocates are advocating.

but not easily cleared up. As that essay points out, "the explanation for "free software" is simple--a person who has grasped the idea of "free speech, not free beer" will not get it wrong again. There is no such succinct way to explain the official meaning of "open source" and show clearly why the natural definition is the wrong one.".

From what I can tell, there's no permission given to share any of these programs, no permission to modify any of these programs, and no permission to distribute these programs commercially.

The blog poster claims "In an official release, Atari has quoted that the purpose of the release is to give potential developers insight into the Atari's gaming platform so they may possibly build upon the 7800 series." but there is no link to the official release from the copyright holder. Therefore the provenance of this source code is unclear. I would consider these programs to be neither open source nor free software. This looks like an offer to download source code for proprietary software then make the mistake of distributing unauthorized derivative works based on these programs. It might be fun to program new Atari 7800 games, but copyright lasts a very long time and there's too little information to verify what the blogger claims.

Re:Just source code for proprietary software.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Saying that software is "free as in speech" has the obvious meaning that you can do virtually whatever you want with it, which is only true if discussing BSD licenses. If you are using "free" the way that GNU intends everyone to, it makes no more intuitive sense than "open". Thus, the correct comparison here is that "open" requires explanation, whereas "free" first requires disambiguation, and then explanation.

Go ahead, take a layman off the street and give him a source code disc. Tell him it's "free as in speech". I guarantee you that he will not infer copyleft.

The problem with "free" is not just the ambiguity, but the fact that the ambiguity is directly misleading. If it were for a less noble cause, people would easily call it propaganda. If you can't do anything you want with it, then it's not free as in freedom.

Re:This is great

[noidentity]

I never thought about it. I think $00 is BRK on the 6502 -- that part seemed logical enough to me. Dunno why NOP would be such an odd value. Anyone?

Perhaps so that accidental execution of a cleared area of memory would break rather than silently execute until it reached something non-zero. On the other hand, the 6502 didn't have any microcode, so opcodes were laid out based on the most efficient way to decode them. This $EA triggered the right combination of steps internally to do nothing. In other words, $EA probably gives them NOP for free. There are lots of unofficial opcodes which do strange things, including NOPs that use more than one byte (so-called double NOPs and triple NOPs).