[mrandish]

> Of course this assumes they kept track of who owns what code in the first place.

Not only that but for any large company to release code somebody in engineering needs to look at it to at least know what all is there, the legal department needs to assess the risk of potential liability, then which license to release it under needs to be decided. Finally, somebody in a senior business role needs to sign off on doing it.

I think it's great when old code gets released but the reason it's rare is it gets complex and it's nobody's job to do it. That's why many such releases are thanks to an employee deciding to care about doing it and having the internal cred and sway to push it through. Or, as it appears in this case, someone who had access to the code and is awesome enough to release it anonymously years later when the business is defunct or will no longer care.

[account42]

This would all be a lot easier if copyright itself had more reasonable term lengths.