OpenMW, an open morrowind reimplementation

[Chris R. Miller]

Nicolay Korslund Wrote:

> Chris R. Miller Wrote:
> 
> > Very very cool, though I do wonder about the legality of what you have just done.  I seem to remember a large number of commercial EULAs being more or less Xerox copies of each other, and all of them very expressly disallow reverse engineering of any kind.
> 
> Well, that's a very valid point. I'm not a lawyer so I can't definitely say anything
> about the legality of the software. Technically it is probably already in violation
> of the DMCA just by allowing access to the data without a copy protection
> scheme.
> 
> That being said, openmw does not do anything that hasn't been done by
> other software for years already (I did very little of the reverse engineering
> myself), and there are similar projects (like ScummVM) that are going strong.
> Furthermore, I'm not based in the US. I honestly don't see how openmw could
> possibly contribute to piracy or hurt Bethesda Softworks in any way. In fact
> it's more likely to increase the shelf-life of one of their products, but that
> doesn't mean they will see it that way.
> 
> But I have no reason to make enemies with anyone, and I will do what they
> ask me to, in the worst case take it down (but I hope it doesn't come to
> that.) One thing to be very careful about though is trademarks, since
> companies basically _have_ to protect them or else they risk losing them.
> That's why I've called it OpenMW, but I will even remove the MW if I have to.

Cool.  The presence of other engine replacements does make your work much less legally violate in my mind.

I don't know if you already have some place to keep your work, but in the event that you'd like some place to stick your code you can use my site if you'd like (http://www.fsdev.net/).  It has Subversion and some nice bug trackers and other gizmos that can be interesting to play with.  Again, I don't know if you already have something, but if you want it you're welcome to register a project on my site.