These days I find it slightly weird that they don't share the source code of the demos or related tools. Demo scene has this wonderful alpha-male thing going.
The demoscene grew out of the cracking/warez scene, so it's somewhat implied you should take a disassembler to it if you really want to figure out what a demo is doing. It's the complete opposite to the OSS culture, where the prevailing assumption is that the source code is most important and nothing can be done without it; in the demoscene, it's more like "we don't need no stinkin' source!" I think these two approaches are both interesting in their own ways.
The demoscene and cracking/warez scene grew apart many decades ago. Even back when I was active (1998-2000 or so), they weren't a big influence any more. There was enough source and tutorials floating around. Just not for every demo released. Mainly because of the hassle with releasing somewhat "presentable" code. Many coders are happy to explain, if you just ask them, though.
Their culture sure is a bit alien. The authors are boasting about the dosbox they've broken, yet (it looks to me that) not a single bug/crash has been reported.
Edit: happily I'm wrong. Quoting ajenner below, "there are emulators (for other targets) which do emulate NTSC decoding properly, but until I did the research for this demo nobody understood how the CGA card generates composite signals well enough to be emulate it properly. I have some code which I hope to be adding to DOSBox (and any other emulators that want it) soon."
I can't speak for the other authors, but I for one plan to release the source code for the parts I wrote (it needs a bit of cleaning up first, though, and I want to get the technical write-ups done first).
I don't feel the ethics of open-source apply here or to any works of art.
Programs like Microsoft Word, which have a near-monopoly on the work that literally billions of people do everyday to be productive and feed their families, when not distributed in a free manner, are tools of unjust power.
I don't feel this person's expressive work, a lifelong dream with no monetary gain, that might merely provide a few weeks of bliss and 15 minutes of internet fame a little inspiration for the rest of us, then become horribly forgotten to the sands of time, is a tool of unjust power.
> alpha-male thing going
I am sorry for whatever you've experienced that leads you to sexist comments like this. I hope that it's able to work its way through your life until you reach the point that you can simply share another person's joy without feeling entitled to have a piece of it yourself.
I can see that my words can be easily interpreted like you did but I was quite literal is stating that the culture is WONDERFUL. I have no hatred against them although I'm definitely an outsider.
Also, I was literal when I referred to the closed source of these creations. I don't demand or expect them to release any source code. I'm merely wondering whether these demos would be MORE interesting with the source code released as well. As always. In 2015 it seems slightly weird that they don't.
To be clear, I definitely share the joy the authors feel accomplishing these feats. Deep respect.
But I don't get your sexism comment. I maintain that the sub-culture involves some behavior that can be described as "alpha-male". Maybe I was inaccurate with the wording. Could have said "competitive" as well.
> But I don't get your sexism comment. I maintain that the sub-culture involves some behavior that can be described as "alpha-male". Maybe I was inaccurate with the wording. Could have said "competitive" as well.
I don't think you've ever been to a demoparty :-)
If there's any "alpha male" behaviour whatsoever, it's purely in a self-ridiculing way. It used to be there, back in the nineties when all demosceners were insecure teenage nerds and some of them felt a need to compensate for something. That part of the scene is gone for twenty years now, but it's still a lot of fun to make references to that part of history.
My favourite example of this is the demo "Regus Ademordna" by Excess [0]. The title is the reverse of "Andromeda Sucks" in Norwegian. Andromeda is another Norwegian demogroup who had just made a reappearance in the demoscene at the time after having been gone since those nineties. They hadn't gotten the memo that all that alpha male stuff was something of the past, so they took serious offense, much to the enjoyment of the rest of the scene.
There's loads of demo source and demotools source been and being released.
The main reasons, afaik, for demo sourcecode to not be released are mostly circumstantial. Either the democoder forgets about it, because a lot of the code is one-off stuff and the next demo is going to be fresh and new! The other reason is that their code is a terrible mess of glue, ducttape and kludges, hacked together moments before the compo deadline (see article ;-) ). The democoder intends to clean up the code (see elsewhere in this thread ;-) ) but then forgets about it because after-demoparty-crash. Occasionally, however, they rest up a bit and later on write a great article about the tricks they pulled (while promising to clean up the code and release it "soon") -- saying this with a great big ;-) of course.
And when something happens to be not released, I've always found just mailing the coder about it incredibly helpful, they're happy to explain, I've made great friends, and learned amazing stuff.
That's definitely not the reason the source is often not released. Often, these days, it's mostly the fact that the code will probably only build on two computers in the world and documenting/fixing that is way more boring than coding a new demo.