And lot of institutional knowledge was lost when EA bought Maxis. There were some old Maxis filing cabinets kicking around the EA offices, and only a few people like Maxis old-timer Mike Perry had any idea where they were or what they contained.
https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/
>What happened to SimRefinery?
>One of the biggest questions surrounding Maxis Business Simulations that’s followed me ever since starting this research is whether SimRefinery is still around somewhere. To my knowledge, there are no surviving copies, and that’s okay. Given how frequently this question comes up, I want to document my research for the sake of completion.
>Mike Perry said that Maxis would have kept a backup copy of SimRefinery in a binder of floppy disks that held many of the master copies of their software. Perry said the binder was likely thrown out or lost when the studio moved to Emeryville in 2004. A second copy would have been kept in off-site storage; for all intents and purposes, this copy is missing or destroyed. 64 None of the Maxis, Thinking Tools, or Chevron alumni I spoke with had saved a personal copy.
I'm also endebted to Mike Perry for helping me dig up and photocopy the original Maxis/DUX SimCity contract from one of those all-but-forgotten filing cabinets, before they were lost.
Years later when I was trying to talk EA into making SimCity open source (based on the work I'd done porting it to Unix -- they didn't have a copy of that code, but I'd kept an archive and copies of the contracts, of course), EA Legal needed to know for sure that they actually had the rights to that code in the clear.
Fortunately I'd kept that photocopy of the Maxis/DUX contrant, and my contract with DUX, which clearly stated that ownership of the code went back to Maxis after 10 years, therefore I could legally give EA a copy of the Unix SimCity source code, and EA legally owned it and could then relicense it under GPLv3.
https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a2...
>Open Sourcing SimCity, by Chaim Gingold
>Hopkins began work on the SimCity to Unix conversion while working at Sun, but the project was eventually completed under the aegis of DUX Software. On July 19th 1991, DUX signed a ten year contract to convert and market SimCity on Unix, with Hopkins brought on as a contractor about six months later. [68] Using the Macintosh version of SimCity, Hopkins performed the conversion, rewrote the remaining sections of assembly language to platform neutral C, and changed the platform from Macintosh to X11. Throughout the 1990’s, Hopkins did the programming necessary to convert SimCity to a wide variety of Unix platforms, adding pie menus and multiplayer support (Perkins 1993; Hopkins 2013; Joffe 2015).
>[...] Surprisingly, Electronic Arts agreed to the arrangement. Their legal counsel, in consultation with Eben Moglen (Columbia Law Professor, general counsel to the FSF, and OLPC advisor), worked through the legal logistics. This effort was aided by Hopkins’s discovery and copying of the original Maxis/DUX licensing agreement, on a lark, while working on The Sims. Hopkins did the coding work of the conversion. [71] EA executives approved of the endeavor, no doubt aided by Will Wright’s legendary persuasiveness and considerable prestige, not to mention the prestige of the OLPC project itself.
I posted this before to another discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13693675
It's a good idea not to just keep a copy of the source code stashed away somewhere, but also any contracts relating to the rights to the code.
In the early 90's, DUX Software licensed the rights to port SimCity to Unix from Maxis. Then DUX made a contract with me to do the work. I kept a copy of my contract with DUX, the original floppies they gave me with the original PC and Mac source code, as well as versions of the source code I ported to Unix.
Years later I got a job working for Maxis on The Sims. Before we shipped it, EA bought Maxis, so a lot of people were let go, projects were canceled, physical and digital files were shuffled around, and institutional knowledge was lost.
After we shipped The Sims but just before I left EA, on a fluke, I asked a Maxis old-timer if he had any idea if the contract between Maxis and DUX for SimCity still existed, and where it might be.
As you would expect, it was in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard." ;(
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on...
So I waited late into the night for the leopard to fall asleep, made a photocopy of it, then returned the original to its hiding place. ;)
Several years later, John Gilmore suggested we persuade EA to relicense the SimCity source code under GPLv3, so it could be shipped with the OLPC.
Of course nobody in EA Management knew where the source code was or if it even still existed, but fortunately I still had my copy.
And of course nobody at EA Legal even knew if EA owned the rights to the changes I'd made (Maxis had gotten into some pretty terrible SimCity licensing contracts in the past).
But fortunately I'd kept a copy of the contract between myself and DUX, and the contract between DUX and Maxis, proving its provenance, which clearly stated that DUX's rights expired after 10 years, after which the rights to all the modifications I made went back to Maxis (and thus were inherited by EA).
Once all that was cleared up, the most important factor was that EA deputized someone on the inside to shepherd the project through the various stages of approval, relicensing, development and QA. Otherwise it would have died on the vine, since everybody in a big company, no matter how well intentioned, is always 500% busy doing their own stuff and can't be distracted by something that doesn't affect the bottom line.
It finally made it through both EA Legal and QA, and we released the SimCity source code and binary for the OLPC under GPLv3!
https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis/tree/master/micropol...