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 release 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 choose to release it anonymously years later when the business is defunct or will no longer care.
For the former, if it's really that big they'll just release it and keep a standard budget aside for if/when the unlocated people come out. The latter is what really blocks movies because it actively costs them money, so they need to be able to earn more than what it is costing them to release. This makes music-heavy/niche music films much more expensive for potential broadcasters/streamers.
It all disproportionately benefits big names and corporations while small time creators and performers get screwed.
The moment recordings came into play it all got screwed up.
Before recordings every musician made their living exclusively from performances and every musician copied each other constantly.
We lost so much with the advent of recording and the associated development of copyrights etc.
The proof is in the numbers: management and corps take the lion's share of revenues within the industry, with the actual musicians and creatives getting a paltry pittance.
The only problem might be the software patents that their code leverages.
Unless you mean that someone could see that you implemented their patent and retroactively go to sue them?
A patent is a method, not an implementation.
> The only problem might be the software patents that their code leverages.
We are talking about patents because Wengo brought it up and I was asking how they are applicable here.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180515-00/?p=98...
I can think of lots of reasons. From a competitive point of view, you might risk having a big enough resurgence that it eats into the business of your replacement. From a technical point of view, it may reveal parts of the sausage making, or expose technology and libraries that you still use and rely on. From a legal point of view, it could open up multiple kinds of liability. From a support and staffing perspective, it typically takes at least a little time to open source something, if you want to do it well, there’s usually vetting & review by engineers and lawyers, and usually the need for more/better documentation than the internal docs.
Think about this from a business perspective- if they predict there’s going to be no financial upside, even indirectly, and there are costs and risks associated with it, then why would they? When companies open-source something, it’s not usually because the code is dead, it’s usually because the people in it are committed to open source and the org agrees to support that cause, or because the company stands to gain valuable attention from the community, and eventually or indirectly, profits.
We do have to support and celebrate when companies decide to release code, but we can’t really expect it or complain when they don’t, it just doesn’t make sense to them and they’re not obligated.