[jsheard]

Ceasing development is one thing, rug pulling licensees by demanding they delete the framework they've built their projects on is another thing entirely. The hell happened at Our Machinery?

The Machinery was a young engine but it had pedigree as the spiritual successor to Bitsquid, which did ship in a number of commercial games until it was killed by Autodesk after they acquired it. The main developers went on to found Our Machinery.

[ivraatiems]

Not only that, but they'd have to delete and force consumers to delete any copies of games published that use the license, unless I am misunderstanding it. There's no way that's enforceable (IANAL, but good lord).

[kragen]

Maybe this is part of an out-of-court settlement with Autodesk to avoid a lawsuit.

[danybittel]

Then they need better lawyers.

[kragen]

Maybe, we don't have any idea how bad their legal position is. They might be considering themselves lucky to avoid prison, like Anthony Levandowski. 50 years ago doing what he did was normal; it was how Silicon Valley got built. Since then the laws have changed.

[elefanten]

Curious if you could supply any specific examples of that being normal in old SV? Of people taking a massive cache of proprietary work, including original research done by colleagues?

Genuine question.

[kevingadd]

Not precisely what you asked for but relevant to this topic of a game engine: A bunch of former NCSoft developers got sued (and lost) for heading off to their new game studio BlueHole with stolen Lineage 3 code and design material. This resulted in jail time.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/tera-developers-guilty-of-stea...

[kragen]

Basically the entire collection of papers of the Charles Babbage Institute consists of boxes of stuff people took home with them, including original research done by colleagues.

Also, as someone pointed out, Fairchild. And as they mysteriously failed to point out, Intel spawned from Fairchild the same way.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Fairchild semiconductor is one example.

[p_l]

At best the "traitorous eight" took with them the direction of research and work they wanted, which wasn't supported by Schockley - and Schockley did try to lockdown as much of the IP he could, taking patents out even if they were dubiously assigned to company.

[gabstv]

They also nuked the forums, discord, every other social.