from Hacker News

Why old, retired but iconic software is almost never open sourced?

by begoon on 2/28/25, 11:02 AM with 10 comments

Why do people rarely open-source old and retired bit iconic software long ago?

For example, on top of my head, but there are lots others:

- Norton Commander - Turbo C and Pascal (at least DOS versions) - Lots of DOS early games - Clipper - Different FIDOnet and BBS related programs

Will these sources die somewhere and never be revealed? :-)

  • by Someone on 2/28/25, 1:24 PM

    It may not be clear who holds the rights to the source code.

    The developer may not have the source code anymore.

    Even if they do, they may not have the rights on third party libraries, third party source code, or digital assets.

    Releasing source code has risks. Source code can include profanities or use terms that nowadays are considered inappropriate, or patent holder may inspect it to find patent infringements, and sue.

    Most of the time, there’s very very little benefit, if anything at all, to the developers in releasing the source code.

  • by _mitterpach on 2/28/25, 12:10 PM

    It is really interesting to look into the problem of software copyright and how you can really struggle trace the ownership and who owns what now.

    For a video that's (surprisingly) closely related to the topic, see CGP Grey's video on the flag of Antarctica:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0wTDK0VOeY

    (The most common flag used for Antarctica was created for the 3D World Atlas software, so presumably whoever owns the copyright to that software now, owns the copyright to the flag of Antarctica)

  • by kwertyoowiyop on 2/28/25, 1:48 PM

    Given there’s no fiscal incentive to, I’m (pleasantly) surprised whenever it does happen.

  • by dcminter on 2/28/25, 11:20 AM

    One good reason is that it's not always obvious who has the rights. Even if the copyright holder is clear it can be hazy whether there might be outstanding NDAs and licensing deals that would cause problems.

    So it's usually safer and (importantly) cheaper not to bother. You need either an insider keen on their own initiative to open it up, or a powerful PR reason to do so.

    It's a shame, but probably unavoidable. I think we ought as a society to at least dramatically shorten the copyright period for software (it's obvious that something like the patent system's 20 years would be more than sufficient) but I can't see much chance of it changing.

    > Will these sources die somewhere and never be revealed? :-)

    Sadly, yes, mostly. :'(

  • by ferguess_k on 2/28/25, 1:03 PM

    Some thought:

    Everyone who sells a piece of software should send the full source code to an offline depository (e.g. offline tapes or disks), and will be published after X years of sales.

    Of course this is just my daydream.