erc@radon.berkeley.edu (Eric Ng) (07/06/90)
In article <9007060252.AA03252@jade.berkeley.edu> DLV@CUNYVMS1.BITNET writes: > >This is a digression, but: > >The mailing list RusTeX-L (which I moderate) had a long discussion of how the 2 >soviet programmers that wrote Tetris never got a penny in royalties. You can >retrieve the archived messages by sending mail to LISTSERV@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU >and using the DATABASE command to select messages containing "TETRIS" from >RUSTEX-L... > >Dimitri Vulis >Department of Mathematics >City University of New York Graduate Center > >Internet: DLV%CUNYVMS1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU >BITNET: DLV@CUNYVMS1 >UUCP: ((rutgers,gatech)!psuvax1,mcsun,unido)!cunyvms1.bitnet!dlv By "the 2 soviet programmers that wrote Tetris", do we mean the people who wrote the very first version of the game, or the person who created the idea of Tetris? As far as I know, Spectrum Holobyte has been treating Pazhitnov (the supposed originator of the idea of Tetris) like a lord, flying him over to this country to promote his new game Weltris. I'm not exactly well versed about what exactly went on when Tetris was created, but most of the credit seems to go to Pazhitnov (and not that "18-year-old programmer who wrote the first version"). All I can say is, if the above conjecture that Messr. Vulis says is true, it's a shame. I'd probably give some of the royalties from egaint to those guys back in Russia, but I've been giving it away free ever since I wrote it (well, for I short time I was recommending that people donate money to charity, but I quickly dropped that idea). -eric Postscript: did the originators of Galaxian or Space Invaders ever get royalties from the tons of clones of those above games? What about Pac-man? I had heard a rumor that a certain software company was censuring a PD software dealer for distributing versions of Tetris not written by that company ... this raises several important legal questions, esp. after that questionable Lotus 1-2-3 ruling. -- -- eric ng 1906 milvia street berkeley california 94704 ..!ucbvax!irss.njit.edu!erc ...!ucbvax!argon!erc erc@irss.njit.edu erc@argon.berkeley.edu