Status of 'flight' source
Steve Hayman
I recently came across a version of 'flight', 'dog' et al that had
been ported to Suns. It runs reasonably well on a colour GX Sparcstation
although it doesn't fill the polygons so a lot of the realism is lost.
Whoever did this port (there is no author listed in the code)
implemented a simple library to emulate SGI graphics. The rest
of the source seems to be the real 'flight' source.
I'm sure that this would be an extremely popular program if
I were to install it on our public Sparcstation cluster.
What disturbs me is comments like this in the original source:
/**************************************************************************
* *
* Copyright (C) 1983, Silicon Graphics, Inc. *
* *
* These coded instructions, statements, and computer programs contain *
* unpublished proprietary information of Silicon Graphics, Inc., and *
* are protected by Federal copyright law. They may not be disclosed *
* to third parties or copied or duplicated in any form, in whole or *
* in part, without the prior written consent of Silicon Graphics, Inc. *
* *
**************************************************************************/
Does anybody know whether this source really is something that
can be distributed? I'm a strong believer in copyright protection
and don't want to install this if the code really is proprietary.
Thanks for any advice. Please respond by mail and I'll summarize.
Steve
--
Steve Hayman Workstation Manager Computer Science Department Indiana U.
saha...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (812) 855-6984
Steve Hayman
Thank you to everyone who replied. I even got a phone call from the
author of 'flight'. It's pretty obvious that this source is not supposed
to be publically available. SGI will let their customers have
the source but the customers must sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Somebody out there has ignored this agreement and made their
Sparcstation version of 'flight' publically available.
I've deleted the program from our machines here and have urged
the site I ftp'd it from to do the same.
It was fun while it lasted. 'flight' is a great program. Although
we don't have any Irises here at the moment, we had one where I used
to work. My heart would really start pounding when I tried to
land the F-18.