it is not about that MS does know about LR and its content... its more about how LR is hosted, the reason why it is hosted and the need to host it as soon becomes open source (and therefore not a pure MS product)

there is a big conflict in this but due to the fact that you got your answer about the licence already this doesnt matter anymore

a final thing to say:
breslin - i suggest you will never write such a mail to me again or it will have consequences
to insult me is one thing... to do the same with my country is something i consider a serious attack
so STOP IT

cheese on toast, thanks for posting the note. It's a bit confused, and uses fuzz language rather than the standard legal terms. The note uses the word "brand" rather than, say, "logo," and it uses the peculiar phrase "access to our intellectual property" to mean something like "explicit license to use our logos" or somesuch.

The basic drift of the note is to make an all-encompassing a refusal, almost ludicrously broad. This is typical with corporations -- they claim more rights than they actually legally have. They're almost to the point of saying it's illegal to refer to their product. That's an exaggeration, but it's the general drift of the thing.

"Brand" is an extremely broad term, encompassing name or title, logo, slogan, and/or design scheme, including fonts, color schemes, symbols and sound.

Refusing "access" is almost impossibly broad. Technically this means they're no longer licensing people to interact with their product in any way.

As far as the logic of the note is concerned, they say they've adopted a policy which prohibits them from doing whatever you were requesting. Basically, they're refusing -- but they're blaming a policy so's you don't take it personally. But technically this is entirely circular: it only confirms that they have not yet decided to license Freelancer. There's nothing in fact prohibiting them to do so. A decision to license Freelancer is equivalent to a decision to change the policy.

So the question remains as it was already: what sort of offer is likely to incline them towards licensing Freelancer?

Another question out of curiosity: what exactly were you asking them for? It might help understand their position, if we knew to what exactly they were responding.

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So the question remains as it was already: what sort of offer is likely to incline them towards licensing Freelancer?

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Anything on paper with alot of $$$.

QuEsTiOn AsKeR
Last Hope MOD


Edited by - Question Asker2044 on 6/26/2007 4:01:40 AM

Does anyone remember "UBISOFT" Freelancer???
The previous letter response from a source at Microsoft alludes to this if anyone has ever bought a copy of this pirated software.

This is actually a pirated version of the original and for that matter is still being sold for profit. Not only that, it has also been a source of ongoing headaches and problems. (including crashes of MP servers)

Obviously, someone or a group of someone's has basically screwed any chances we may have had to aquire the source code or the license for Freelancer.

The real Ubisoft corporation has nothing to do with Freelancer.

Question asker got it right ^^, everyone donate 20 pounds to a big pot and then we throw it at microsoft...

they would probably laugh, sue us, win then walk off with the money we originally gave them -_-

Requiem: A Freelancer Total Conversion MOD

Openlancer Project

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Another question out of curiosity: what exactly were you asking them for? It might help understand their position, if we knew to what exactly they were responding.

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Aye, Cheese - any info upon what your email to this person contained?

As for Ubisoft version, i was under the impression that MS let it join the "classics" collection, upon which this is sold? I must have mis-read somewhere, but Ubisofts version did have no copy protection upon it (so not requiring CD to play).


@Swat - you start out saying you can't say something about LR, and then in the end (over two posts) basically tell everyone instead

Either say nothing at all (which was your original stance), or tell them immediately. No point saying one, and then doing another. As it is, most people already know, so it's no big secret at all.

UbiSoft and Software Pyramide both sell Freelancer in Germany at low prices (budget title).

Can you at least give a valid quote before claiming such wrong info?

oh my bad *goes and finds e-mail* here we go

NOTE: This is a tad long... now dont leave remarks of asking for XYZ i DO NOT care WHAT SO EVER. i have hard enough time re taking english let alone writting a e-mail to someone i dont kno and making it make sense (see, i even suck at that lol) and im absolutely crap at starting anything

well here it is



Hi, im a frequent player of the game Freelancer, ive noticed recently that its numbers are slowly degrading, eventually this is just going to "kill" freelancer completely, ive seen the many mods that have been made just not get anywhere because of this and only the people that truly and genuinely have a passion for the game play these. I have made many mods, but we have gotten to the point of we have done just about EVERYTHING we can do, you have many people e-mail you asking for this and that and this can be regarded as another one of "those" e-mails, the few things we have left to figure out are the .SUR file format, .ALE files and a few other tid bits. this would be easier with the source code or a direction to point us in, even naming the programs that they used to build and code the content for the game was we can use it to better our play and make freelancer live on longer and longer. I have seen you have links to www.lancersreactor.com on your freelancer page, the community there, if you released the source code or ANY programs that would be beneficial to us would be welcomed GREATLY.

Now, everyone knows that digital anvil no longer exist so what would the harm be from not releasing the source code? from a legal point of view it may well be different, but by the time your copyright holds on it run out (if they ever do) freelancer would have probably stopped being sold and freelancer would have died out completely.

To prove to you how much we would love for you to do this, if you pay a short visit to these 3 petitions, you will see how much we are in love with this game, and how much we want to see this game live on.

This is for the sequel
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/ ... gi?FLPet&1

This is for the Source Code
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/ ... cgi?flcode

And this is for the SDK
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?flsdk

You can see there are ALOT of people wanting this to live on, if you gave us the source code, we could "mod" a freelancer 2, this would still require people buying the original game to play the freelancer 2 game, which, like all other mods, would be a free download.

So please, for the sake of the people that still play this GREAT game and for freelancers continued life, helps us out anyway you can.

Thanks for your time

<my name here>


Requiem: A Freelancer Total Conversion MOD

Openlancer Project

Thanks cheese on toast.

This request was probably interpreted as a request to release the source code, pro bono. They're almost certainly not going to do that. The reason is fairly simple: it is possible (maybe not probable, but conceivable) that another company will want to buy exclusive rights to the license. In other words, the license *might* be worth *something*. So long as that's true, nobody inside Microsoft is going to decide to give it away for free, because it could/would make them look bad. It's throwing away capital.

There's a slight argument that a new versions of Freelancer could be created, and this would boost sales of the original (so Microsoft could make money that way). This is logical and reasonable, but they're not going to look at it that way. The sales are negligible, and it would be far too risky to imagine that they'll improve enough to justify the loss of capital.

There appear to be three options: offer to buy the license; and/or offer to provide royalties to Microsoft for Freelancer 2; or form a development company and apply for Microsoft to hire you for the sequel.

You can't just ask MS to make a second Freelancer, I doubt any of us want them to make it, so that petition to make a sequel is bad.
I've seen so many petitions for freelancer it's not even funny, and I've retired from signing them anymore.
Only way to make a second freelancer is to get a job at MS games and kiss the bosses butt and have a uber cool plan for a second.

them petitions have been there for donkies years lol

Edited out sig

Edited by - Finalday on 6/27/2007 10:38:21 AM

@chips - right but its pretty hard to know that something is wrong because of some background info you have and knowing that this info may not be published because its not public business
its a thin line not to be crossed but the try to prevent a mistake still should be done in my eyes (even if its just a hint to the admins)
if ppl accept this or not... that is their decision but it doesnt make this "try" wrong


ohh and ehmm... SWAT is still just a tag and not the nickname... you can see this by the _ (originally lancer clans and portals used tags this way: "TAG_" and not "[TAG", its some kind of "tradition" from the early days of lancer (more than 7 years ago))
but ok ... this is off topic again so lets stop it here


back to the licence topic:
the idea with the $$$ is great... impressive...
but lets wake up from that dream and realize that LR still needs donations for a new server.. and that nobody is really willing to donate
so why do you think that ppl will donate for nothing more than "the chance that the source code is going to be released"?
not to mention that ALOT more would be needed than for a new LR server

the next question i have is: what do you want with a 4 years old engine that is for sure not up to date?
i mean - even if you get the engine you will need very good coders to fix the current errors, get the graphics to current standards, fix the netcode and the memory leak and then maybe code a FL2
how many years will that take?

well afterall we are just speculation about something that wont happen because MS wont release the engine

Well I wasn't talking about the community buying the title. If I had muti million dollars laying around I would buy out the licence and prepare to make another one while releasing the scoure code to the old one. Yes that's right use a whole new engine to make a whole new game.(Makes sence doesn't it?) None of this freeware engine.
Why becuase like you said the engine is old and crappy and everyone loves a new car with a new engine. zoom zoom! So everyone wins.

I agree -- it's unwise to hitch the whole idea on the shaky prospect of raising enough money by donations. Normally when one wants to raise money for a project, one goes to investors and banks. That sounds a lot smarter to me.

The community donation would come in the form of time and energy.

As to the question of the engine, I'd like to be corrected on this, but I believe we mean at least two major things by "engine": the rendering engine and the game engine. The former has to do with graphical presentation, where the latter has to do with flight-mechanics, AI, and so forth. I believe it's pretty easy to port to a different rendering engine, and I expect this would be necessary modern-looking graphics are important. (Personally, I think they are indeed important.)

I don't know that it would be desirable -- certainly not necessary -- to replace the game engine. Normally with a project like this it's merely augmented. Indeed, I expect that, any Freelancer 2 project, if it doesn't have the benefit of the original's engine, will make great efforts to clone the game behavior of the original, at least close enough to be sort of "true to the original."



Edited by - breslin on 6/27/2007 5:26:09 PM