Abandonware

[LordXenophon]

If there ever was a legal definition for abandonment, then companies which do not wish their software to be considered abandoned would know exactly how to stop their software from being considered abandoned.

Perhaps all they have to do is publish another edition every so often, in which case we would see more retro anthologies.

Perhaps it would require the company to state that it is abandoning, in which case some companies would simply never make that statement.

Perhaps it is defined by providing support, in which case we might see some companies put a token "online help" section on their web pages as a cheap means of maintaining ownership of the game.

Whatever the rule turns out to be, those companies which want to maintain control would find a cheap way to do so. However it is done, you would not be able to legalize it without defining specifically what you are making legal.

Many of those means of maintaining control would also serve the supposed purpose of copying abandonware. For example, if they have to publish a retro anthology every 5 years, then the game remains available and probably gets a few tweaks to make it compatible with the latest operating systems and/or platforms.

[exaes]

and here i was thinking abandonware was legal. i think they should make it legal, take commander keen or duke nukem is there still someone making profit from this game ? if not then it should be put online for free as abandonware.

[dowekeller]

I think copyright needs to be reeled in to allow a company to have monopoly over a property for 20-30 years max and then it's public domain, it was not intended to be infinite, and it shouldn't be. And while copying and playing "abandonware" is technically illegal (what are the chances that anyone is going to press charges over me playing Yar's Revenge) I see no ethical dilemma in doing so. It's not the same in any way as copying a game such as ODST where there is a viable revenue stream associated with it, and the publisher should expect to make money each copy of it.

[Retodon8]

Originally Posted by exaes

and here i was thinking abandonware was legal.

Abandonware can't be legal or illegal since the word is basically meaningless.
Compare with "cool games", which would be different for everyone, so you can't tie any legal rules to it.
What dowekeller is talking about does exist though.
After X years computer games, like any media (as far as I know) become public domain.
It just takes a little longer than most pirates are willing to wait.

Originally Posted by exaes

i think they should make it legal, take commander keen or duke nukem is there still someone making profit from this game ?

You didn't even try doing any research here, did you?
In this case it's a matter of finding the companies originally associated with the games online.
3D Realms has an online store, and id Software has an online store as well.
So yes, those games are still being sold.
Even if they weren't, it's illegal to download them from some free site, even if you think they are abandoned.

If you read this article, you'll see 3DR actually patched a 14-year old games once, meaning they didn't abandon it even after all that time.
Filtering out their news page for classic games, you'll see that they did release several older games as freeware, a word that does mean something.

I do agree with probably everybody that older games nobody is willing to buy any more should be freely downloadable, don't get me wrong.
I'm just stating the way things are here.

[LordXenophon]

The whole concept of "abandonware" is the idea that it's only illegal if the owner cares. Technically, it's still illegal, but there is rarely a complaint.

[Retodon8]

If that is the definition we go by... if the owner doesn't care about its product any more, there won't be any complaints. If there were, the owner would still be caring.

But you're right, that's what the word "abandonware" implies, and in fact should mean. It's just that in practice the people decide when a product is abandoned, whatever its actual state is in reality. And like you said, the fact that a company/person tolerates something does not make it legal, although logically it makes it seem a lot less bad, even OK. It really would be a shame if a game is lost because it isn't sold any more, not in retail, not as a digital download, not as freeware, not as abandonware, and it just ceases to exist.