zlacker

Infocom wasn't founded until 1979 -- this source code is from an earlier version of the game which was widely distributed among PDP-10 systems.

The original authors might have a copyright claim, but it's not clear that Infocom (or its heirs) would.

>>duskwu+(OP)
I contacted the original authors except Marc, who's email address I don't have. They had no objections. Marc responded on Reddit and seems OK with it.

>>larsbr+0M
That's great, and I did not mean to cast aspersions on the legality or ethics of the release. I just was somewhat uncomfortable not to see any mention of legal terms in the repo, or a mention that the authors were OK with the release.

>>duskwu+(OP)
Infocom sold derivative works of this, so its seems to me that they would have some rights to this code.

If it was some sort of non-exclusive license, there should be no problem, because the authors seem to be on board with the release.

If the authors transferred their copyright to Infocom upon forming the company, then this code is technically no longer theirs to give away, especially since the IP rights were subsequently re-sold (maybe even multiple times).

I agree with others in this discussion that at this point, the code most likely has primarily academic/historical value. But that would not necessarily stop an owner from suing a deep pocketed entity like MIT.

>>microt+XC1
As far as I understand, some MIT legal department OK'ed this release. Your question about a license is of course very legitimate, and someone posted a GitHub issue about it.

>>microt+KE1
IANAL, but one could assume that a similar policy to the copyright of a thesis or dissertation would apply here, which is to say that the students retained copyright (if they did not create the work "for hire" under a grant), but the University keeps a non-exclusive license to republish for pedagogical, scholarly, or administrative reasons. Arguably a open source dump like this definitely fits scholarly if not pedagogical uses.

But it's an interesting gray area certainly, as Zork was probably not "properly" prepared as a thesis/dissertation including MIT's recommended explicit statement granting the above non-exclusive license: "The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part." [1]

[1] https://oge.mit.edu/gpp/degrees/thesis/copyright/