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Re:Reconstructed Commander Keen 1-3 Source Code by viraptor on Friday December 19, 2025 @06:53AM (#46324818)
It's not legal unless the person had the rights to begin with. It may be legal for a clean room reimplementation, but not a decompilation project like this. iD/Apogee can totally request a takedown, so I wouldn't recommend republishing that...
Re:Reconstructed Commander Keen 1-3 Source Code by Randomno on Friday December 19, 2025 @07:27AM (#46325088)
> It's not legal

Based on what? Afaik decompilation is a grey area and projects that enforce clean-room design do it to stay out of this grey area.

Re:Reconstructed Commander Keen 1-3 Source Code by bluGill on Friday December 19, 2025 @08:40AM (#46325729)
Copyright violation. If you write a book and I translate it to a different language you own the copyright on my translation. (except poetry which is artistic enough that it cannot be translated and so your version inspires me but I can't just translate it ). Decompilation doesn't have enough creative work to call it anything other than a translation.

I'm not a lawyer. I'm reasonably sure I'm right so the above is good enough for discussion, but if you need legal advice see a lawyer.

Re:Reconstructed Commander Keen 1-3 Source Code by cannonpr on Friday December 19, 2025 @10:01AM (#46326582)
Actually you should look up the info there, you actually don’t which is what a lot of fansubs rely on, they mostly only will own your translation if they chose to formally translate and publish commercially a translation in that country. If they don’t, you can distribute your translation for free. There is a lot of variability on this per country too, with very interesting laws in greece and germany in particular.
Re:Reconstructed Commander Keen 1-3 Source Code by pessimizer on Friday December 19, 2025 @11:55AM (#46328022)
> If you write a book and I translate it to a different language you own the copyright on my translation.

Not quite true. You and I both own the copyright to your translation. Neither of us can publish it without the other's permission.

Re:Reconstructed Commander Keen 1-3 Source Code by viraptor on Friday December 19, 2025 @03:58PM (#46330840)
This project compiles to identical binary to the original one. Distributing this source is the same as distributing the game in practice.