Basics

This page goes over the concept of bringing Abandonware "back from the dead"
Mainly relevant to Software, but sometimes can be extended to hardware
- This is because hardware rights tend to be sold off, rather than be just abandoned, but not always
TLDR: If Tilt Brush can be open sourced, and if all sorts of retro games can be revived by enthusiasts reverse engineering them, what else can we apply that to?

To-Do

Due to being driven by profit, or broad user trends, many products can be abandoned by the company that crated them
This is typically due to them not making profit, but is also done sometimes due to them being "obsolete"
- These considerations still do not include Edge Cases that are still relevant, or ethusiasts, both of which may want to continue to use the product and "keep it alive"
Usually, in software, the reason is due to the work needed to be done via the cloud for the process, vs how much profit the service produces
For hardware it is typically "how well it is selling" vs factory costs
Given that Distributed Production as well as running private servers makes these arguements invalid, the reasons for giving the product a death sentence don't make much sense

The "Retro Gaming Community" has frequently reverse engineered games, and consoles, to run after support has ended, and to be able to emulate them on other hardware that can be maintained
- "It runs doom" is a good example of this, as well as all the internet features of the Wii Console

This is more rare, but has begun to emerge as a method
A recent example is Tilt Brush
- This was an Application that allowed users to Paint in a 6DOF Enviroment in VR
- It was widely praized and one of the first "unique" vr applications that made it "worth it" to care about vr (see Killer Application )
- It was killed off probably due to the operating costs of the "Poly" website for sharing the media people creating, and diminishing sales as people purchased it and it didn't use a Software as a Service model
- However Due to Pressure From the Community It's Code (along with the code for poly, there was a petition, check in on this) was Open Sourced

Informative Article on Undocumented Open Source Code (related note, need to make a page/word for 'documnenting stuff that wasn't / was poorly documented)