[otras]

I’m reminded of the time when a Reddit user bought a random box of Blizzard things on eBay and ended up finding a StarCraft gold master source code CD. Many people suggested sharing the code, but Blizzard lawyers reached out. Blizzard eventually gave them a bunch of swag after they returned it.

Would have been so interesting to see.

https://mashable.com/article/starcraft-source-disc

[scyzoryk_xyz]

Those lawyers must have had a laugh there and then. Money? Nah, let’s see if they go with toys and clothing from the warehouse.

[underdeserver]

Publishing it would be breaking the law and exposing themselves to a lawsuit, which they would lose. The swag is nice.

[deaddodo]

Well there's two arguments to be made. They 100% gave him the source code in a grab bag of goodies. That's a pretty simple case of he has a right to the disc itself, so he could have just kept it (or resold it) and not published. Them giving him "stuff" was them "buying" the item back, not just them being nice (as you put it).

There's also an argument to be made that the code itself does not infringe on their IP, as this was the lost source code from the old edition of StarCraft (from how I'm reading it in the news). Losing this code specifically made Blizzard restart the project, so it's not even the same project nor a commercially released product.

The former argument is pretty black and white. The latter very tenuous.

[Aurornis]

> There's also an argument to be made that the code itself does not infringe on their IP,

That’s not how IP works.

Blizzard didn’t forfeit their rights to the IP at any point. Even selling them a grab bag of stuff that unintentionally included a copy of the source code doesn’t mean the recipient actually received a legal license to the IP.

You can make all the arguments you want, but in the court of law you’re not going to get away with anything that involves giving away another company’s IP, even if they accidentally let you see a copy of it. “Finders keepers” doesn’t work with IP.

[deaddodo]

Sure, the recipient doesn't have the right to call it their own or commercially distribute/benefit from it. I didn't make a claim otherwise.

I said the code they have does not infringe on the commercially released product called StarCraft as it is not a portion thereof. I even stated that releasing it or otherwise making it available is tenuous at best. So I'm not even sure what you're arguing.

> “Finders keepers” doesn’t work with IP.

He didn't "find" it, they willingly transferred it to him along with a bunch of other things they randomly grabbed from their warehouse.

[whelp_24]

"IP" is a collection of various laws and contracts used to keep exclusivity, it doesn't exist on its own. No law mentions IP. I am not sure the case is a firm as you say it is. Especially since he didn't sign anything.

[alpaca128]

Not publishing doesn't break any law and that disc is worth more in any way than a few knick-knacks.

And if you don't make an online post about it you could even anonymously leak it to archive.org or something so at least that game won't be yet another that's lost forever thanks to DRM.

[93po]

Who said anything about publishing. Just give it to a friend who might share it with peers

[bathtub365]

Now in addition to copyright violation you’re part of a conspiracy

[costanzaDynasty]

Sports teams do it all the time.

Congrats catching that ball that could be worth more than a hundred thousand dollars, would you like a grab bag of team merchandises instead?

[ClassyJacket]

What's a gold master source code CD? Source code wouldn't be in the gold master... The gold master is the final version intended to be pressed to retail disks.

Also:

"The disc in question allegedly contains the source code to the original StarCraft game that GameSpot reported as being lost back in 2000 -- it forced Blizzard to start from scratch on its massively popular real-time strategy game."

What does this mean? StarCraft came out in 1998. Also losing one copy doesn't mean you lose all the other copies. And I can't find this supposed article from 2000. I have so many questions...

[skissane]

It probably means “version of the source code used to build the gold master”.

Some places have (or had) a business process of escrowing both the release and the source used to build it. Escrowing just the source used to build the release can require significantly less storage than escrowing the whole version control system. It also avoids the problem “we have the entire revision history, but we aren’t sure which commit was used to build these binaries”

If you lose everything-a colleague told me the story of a company whose offices were in WTC, luckily all the staff got out alive on 9/11, but they forgot to make offsite backups of the source code-the source code to the release(s) shipped to customers is most important, because you need it to make patches. The rest of the revision history, while valuable, is less essential.

[otras]

Presumably the source code for the gold master - “Gold Master Source Code” was written on the disk itself. The Imgur link is no more, but you can still see a preview image of it in the original Reddit post. Judging from the comments, it also sounds like the OP may have looked through the contents on a live stream and confirmed it was source code.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/640iem/foun...

[ClickedUp]

> The Imgur link is no more, but you can still see a preview image of it in the original Reddit post.

Here it is: https://web.archive.org/web/20170505105616/https://imgur.com...

[IYasha]

what a sad story!