Hacker News Reader

Comment by stevage | Hacker News Reader

> as that had been done by Microsoft, and would therefore include Microsoft copyrighted code.

How does that follow? Normally copyright would transfer to the company paying for it.

Microsoft weren't hired by Id to port Doom. They did so exclusively for their own purposes: to show off Windows 95 with DirectX as a performance gaming platform. They licensed the Doom engine, made their own changes, and released Doom 95 usable with a retail copy of the game assets.

Oddly enough, the project of "porting Doom to Windows" was started by Gabe Newell, who worked at Microsoft at the time,

The earliest(? - who knows) release of the port is from 1994, ran on 3.x and used the WinG and Win32s API:

- https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/historic/wdoom

- https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/historic/wdoom2

- https://virtuallyfun.com/2011/03/29/windoom-wing-win32s-on-w...

I knew Gaben's initial project was for 3.x and WinG, but I didn't know it was released!

Ah, that makes sense, thanks.

It all depends on how the contract between Microsoft and Id was worded.

If Id had paid Microsoft to do the port, it would automatically be work-for-hire and the copyrights would belong to Id, unless the contract said otherwise.

But Microsoft essentially licensed the Doom source code and ported it themselves, it's not work-for-hire, so the copyright on any changes would default to Microsoft. Though, I'm really not sure if Microsoft paid anything for this licence, or if there even was a contract.

This is a comprehensively incorrect explanation of copyright and contract law.

> If Id had paid Microsoft to do the port, it would automatically be work-for-hire and the copyrights would belong to Id, unless the contract said otherwise.

Nope, not true. Work by non employees is only work-for-hire if it falls into one of the qualifying categories and the contract explicitly says that it is work-for-hire.

It's definitely a topic for a CSI: HN, but I think it's a was most likely a part of a larger agreement between a relatively small shop and a behemoth.

It's not automatically work-for-hire; that has to be stipulated in the contract. Recently there was a lawsuit about this involving, of all things, Sonic the Hedgehog. An artist and writer named Ken Penders, working for Archie Comics on Sonic comic books, sued his former employer claiming ownership over certain characters created for the comic, most notably those connected to Knuckles the Echidna. Because Archie couldn't prove that Penders's comic work was work for hire (they lost the original contract), they settled out of court in favor of Penders. This ended up losing the Sonic license and had various effects on the Sonic universe. For example, he threatened to sue Paramount over the idea of Knuckles having a father, because Knuckles's Archie Comic universe father was a Penders creation. So rather than depict his father directly for the Knuckles series, they represented him with a puppet in an abstract sequence -- a puppet bearing a suspiciously Penders-like moustache.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com