[HN Gopher] Reviving Old X Code
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Reviving Old X Code
Author : fcambus
Score : 114 points
Date : 2021-01-03 18:18 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (keithp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (keithp.com)
| skissane wrote:
| Looking at bug - https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
| bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=974011 - there is all this talk about
| copyright of the xmille and mille computer programs, I don't see
| any discussion of the question of the copyright of the underlying
| card game.
|
| Mille Bornes was invented by Arthur Dujardin (using pen name
| Edmond Dujardin), illustrated by Joseph Le Callennec, and first
| released in 1954 [0]. Dujardin died in 1964 [1], so using EU
| copyright term of author's life + 70 years, its copyright would
| expire in 2034. Le Callennec died in 1988, so copyright on the
| original illustrations would expire in 2058. (I don't know how
| dependent the illustrations in the computer game are on the
| original.)
|
| I'm not sure who currently owns the copyrights to the original
| card game. But Dujardin founded the Dujardin company which still
| sells Mille Bornes [3] so I would assume they still do. Since
| 2007, the Dujardin company has been owned by the French TV
| network TF1 [4].
|
| The copyright owners to the card game have probably never heard
| of this obscure non-commercial computer game. Who knows if they'd
| react to it indulgently or not.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mille_Bornes but actually the
| French article has a lot more information:
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_bornes
|
| [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Dujardin
|
| [2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Le_Callennec
|
| [3] https://www.jeuxdujardin.fr/produit/milles-bornes-
| pegboardab...
|
| [4] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dujardin_(%C3%A9diteur)
| twic wrote:
| I believe that game mechanics are not copyrightable. The text
| and artwork are, but not the rules themselves.
|
| My dad has a naval-themed clone of Milles Borne, which we
| played a lot when I was a kid:
|
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6806/nautic-miles
|
| I liked it so much that when we had a school project to make a
| game, I made a space themed clone of that!
| tjader wrote:
| IANAL, but I don't think games are copyrightable per se. You
| may have a registered tradermark on the name an logo, you have
| copyright over the specific artwork and text in the game, and
| you may have a patent in some specific mechanics of the game,
| but the game itself is not covered by copyright.
| skissane wrote:
| > IANAL, but I don't think games are copyrightable per se
|
| IANAL either, and you may well be right, but maybe this is
| the sort of question in which the answer may depend on which
| country's laws we are talking about? Even if what you say is
| true in country X, it might not be true in country Y.
|
| > You may have a registered tradermark on the name an logo
|
| Indeed, Dujardin SAS owns a registered US trademark on the
| phrase "MILLE BORNES" for a card game - https://tsdr.uspto.go
| v/#caseNumber=72156515&caseType=SERIAL_... - applied 1962,
| granted 1965, last renewed in 2015 (up for renewal again in
| 2025).
|
| I don't know whether a registered trademark on a physical
| card game applies to a computer version of it, but I would
| suspect it does.
| wazoox wrote:
| Fortunately, Xmille graphics have nothing in common with
| the original ones (which are really adorably old-fashioned
| and oh so typically '50s).
| john-tells-all wrote:
| Note: the author is Keith Packard, who _wrote_ a ton of the
| original X Window System code. I adored that system! The idea of
| running graphical code on multiple machines, then displaying the
| results locally, has yet to be surpassed.
|
| "In 2011, O'Reilly awarded an open source award to Packard, as
| "the person behind most of the improvements made on the open
| source desktop in the last ten years at least."" --
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Packard
| pjmlp wrote:
| I attended a couple of FOSDEM talks from him, very nice
| experience.
| blinkingled wrote:
| TL:DR version - People who love programming are not shy or afraid
| of going from just needing to update copyrights to converting K&R
| to ANSI-C, fixing pointer bugs, adding new widgets and even
| finding new card images in SVG to make it look all better! Hope
| these KGames updates land in Debian unstable soon.
|
| Also I wondered from the headline why keithp is into XCode -
| might be better to have used X11 code instead.
| martyvis wrote:
| Some of the code was from X10!
| blinkingled wrote:
| > A very basic port to X11 was done at some point, and that's
| what Debian has in the archive today
|
| So, no?
| kiddico wrote:
| I'm not saying we're going to bring this guy's site down... but
| we're totally going to bring this guy's site down.
|
| Just going to leave this right here...
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210103182219/https://keithp.co...
| MaxLeiter wrote:
| Good call, it's down for me. Thanks!
| babkayaga wrote:
| live xmille, great job keith!
|
| one if the new cards says vehicle prioritaire. given card names
| are in French should be vehicule prioritaire i guess....
| taviso wrote:
| Funny, he mentions the Xaw fonts, I was just looking at something
| similar. I've been using XTerm with Xaw3dXft for years - It
| literally has Xft in the name, so how come the text in the menus
| and toolbars is so crunchy?
|
| I eventually tracked it down, Xaw3dXft operates in compatibility
| mode by default. A oneline patch enables all the new features,
| and makes a world of difference.
|
| Here's a screenshot, I think it's night and day:
| https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1344779126767435776
|
| I mailed a patch to the maintainer, hopefully the next version
| will fix it!
| drewg123 wrote:
| A few years ago, I rebuilt my projects from my undergrad graphics
| class in 1991. They were written on 32-bit Decstations running
| ULTRIX, and worked after only a few changes on FreeBSD/amd64.
| Most of the changes were actually just to fix up some header file
| includes. I was surprised that that they worked just fine.
| Lammy wrote:
| I've never seen a UI described as "rustic" before, but I love it.
| bartvk wrote:
| He's a pretty good writer. To me, it read as a feel-good
| programmer story. I loved reading it.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >Imagine trying to build Windows or Mac OS code from the early
| 90's on a modern OS...
|
| I guess, in Windows case it also should be relatively easy?
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Yeah, though pure X11 code should still be easier (ignoring
| anything not related to the APIs at hand of course, like the
| assumptions the existing code had about 32bit-ness) since the
| API hasn't changed at all. Win16 vs Win32 is 99% the same, but
| there are still a few minor differences, like some changes in
| how WPARAM (which was now 32bit) was interpreted in a few
| messages.
|
| Mac OS would be a complete rewrite though, no salvaging that.
| p_l wrote:
| Early 1990s X11 clients are sometimes broken on recent X.Org
| setups in my experience, in subtle ways usually involving
| keyboard.
|
| And that's assuming running under X.Org.
|
| As for Win32, if the application didn't do stupid things like
| setting bitflags that were "reserved for future use", things
| apparently work _without_ recompile for basic GUI from 1.01
| to Windows 10.
| badjeans wrote:
| Only on Windows 10 32bit, which according to steam stats,
| is used by 0.10% of users.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| The post above was about compiling not running older
| programs. In terms of running Windows is better, though in
| either case you do need to find workarounds (what you
| describe sounds like such a case).
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