Could it go "Open Source"?

Grasping at straws to get Coldstone

It was great. We all liked it. If updated, I'd buy several licenses (I actually used it to teach certain concepts in the High School where I work). Still, it must not have sold well for Ambrosia. Instead of killing it, or acknowledging it's death, could they release the source code?

I know that would not benefit Ambrosia, but if they are really just shelving it, it would not cost them anything either. Perhaps there would be enough programmers out there willing to try to clean up the code.

Really, just grasping at straws. I'd love to see this program be reborn to full OS X, universal binary, status!

Jon

Maelstrom went open-source.

Just thought I'd bring that up.

Well, unless Beonox releases their tight grip on the source code, it's probably never going to happen.

This has been addressed with Ambrosia, mainly to help update, and either Andrew does not want to release Coldstone's open source outside of his circle of employees or he legally can't. I suspect he legally can't, as he got it from a different company, and I'm sure there were some legal stipulations when he bought it. Nevertheless, Coldstone's open source will not be released. Sorry.

@shamannils, on Mar 12 2007, 11:57 AM, said in Could it go "Open Source"?:

This has been addressed with Ambrosia, mainly to help update, and either Andrew does not want to release Coldstone's open source outside of his circle of employees or he legally can't. I suspect he legally can't, as he got it from a different company, and I'm sure there were some legal stipulations when he bought it. Nevertheless, Coldstone's open source will not be released. Sorry.

Could Beenox be contacted/lobbied to release it? I thought Ambrosia bought all the rights, so they could do as they see fit. If not, does it revert back to Beenox? Do they have plans with it? Just seems a shame to lose this interesting piece of software.

Well, there are two problems I see here really. The first being that we don't actually know Ambrosia's legal rights in terms of the source for Coldstone. Do they own it outright? Do they have merely the right to publish and perhaps update it? Do they have almost nothing at all?

Only person that knows those answers would be Andrew, and he's unlikely to spill confidential business agreements in public.

The other problem has to do with contacting Beenox about it - and it's a multilayered problem. The first layer being that we don't know, as above, the relationship between Beenox & ASW in terms of specific ownership... and the second problem, namely that Beenox doesn't really exist anymore; they are a fully owned subsidiary of Activision, and aren't independant at all. As such, I don't know if they have any ability to release their old code, even if they retain any rights to it - it's possible, even probable, that Activision bought up their back catalogue as well, which means you'd need Activision's permission, possibly Ambrosia's permission, maybe even some other people's.

It's a nice idea, really. But we'd still need other things than just a copy of the source code... there're a lot of great OSS projects that just fold up and die because there's either not enough interest, or not enough skilled programmers to go around. Given Coldstone's current woes and limited usability (compiles on what, PPC X.2 only?) it might not even take off as OSS.

-Andiyar

How would ASW even be able to fix the major CS bugs if they don't even have access to the source code, what have they been trying to do to fix it up to now, and finally if there's no hope getting the source code then what are the remaining options? :huh:

Oh no, Ambrosia has the source code. We just don't know the legalities of releasing it. And it doesn't matter, because it's Ambrosia's to do or not do. Sorry.