Found a bunch of source files...

[noonien]

So we're in the middle of upgrading our NAS here and I'm sorting through old backups, and I stumbled across a 1.5gb file called bbs5.zip. I haven't the faintest idea where it came from. I think I downloaded it in Sept, 2008.

Inside, there is a MajorBBS & Worldgroup folder stuffed with MBBS stuff, WG stuff, and MajorMUD stuff. Not sure if it's just copies of what everyone here already has, or if this is new helpful information. I remember a few searches going on here for old files, figured this might help.

I know there are some ISVs here, and theres that everpresent "who the hell owns all this software?" thing goin on, dunno if that's been resolved or not, but there's a bunch of cracks and serial numbers in this thing too. If anyone wants me to pull it down, post here or send an email and ill try to sanitize the zip. I assume, at this point, everyone is just happy there's a community still using this software!

http://th3ht.com/noonien.rar

So far, in MBBS there's anon teleconference, cheersoft stuff, farwest, east side computing, game connection, LOADS of MBBS docs in PDF format, LORD, swords of chaos, tele arena, vircom..

in /MajorBBS & WG development software:entertainment add on source code 6.22, fazuul source, kyrandia source, mbbs 6.25 source, phar lap DOS extender source, "wgdev", GALDEV.zip, TSHXXX.C, yadda yadda


The list goes on and on and on. ...and this is just the MBBS/WG folder.
RAR is uploading now. Please give it an hour or so. (800mb)

[Drex]

OUCH! was this cleared by Rick?

[frcorey]

prolly not.
I looked at it. it's stuff thats been around for a long time.
lots of junk from wghack sites. and the archive contains 2 or 3 nice viruses which my scanner picked up and deleted.

[noonien]

Aww, I was hoping I stumbled on the motherload of WG source. Think I should pull the file down?

[Drex]

I know there are some ISVs here, and theres that everpresent "who the hell owns all this software?" thing goin on, dunno if that's been resolved or not,

Here`s some info.

NetVillage has historically refused to provide this documentation because it does not and can not exist.

This is easily determined by public records. The court cases that show the UCC loan documents from 1995 through 1997 when Tessier/Berg's Galacticomm Technologies Inc. refinanced the loan originated by Galacticomm Inc. The court then did judge that the bank can foreclose. On September 3, 2002 a certificate of title was produced showing Union Planters Bank as the owner of the rights (and physical property too).

Throughout all of the time all of the loans instructed Galacticomm never to allow the assets out of the state of Florida. In the judgement the judge instructed the sheriff to go get the stuff. I wonder if what NV did is actually a felony and/or federal offense since the property, not theirs, is technically stolen and then carried across state lines.

Finally the SEC documentation - easily obtainable thru EDGAR - establishes that the term "General Intangibles" does indeed cover intellectual property (this is standard in legal terms anyway) and most importantly highlights that the Union Planters interest is primary. All other claimants were subordinate to Union Planters' lien. This was acknowledged by Mssrs. Tessier, Berg, and company as well.

So finally all that is left to discover is what did Union Planters (now Regions) Bank do with their rights? I know that they were looking to find the assets and sue the thieves but they never put 2 and 2 together to realize that Netvillage was the one who had them. Their main concern was acquiring the money from the judgments that Galacticomm won against the companies doing the IPO - they were owed nearly $6mm in judgments! That money is now rightfully the bank's. When I bought the assets I bought everything EXCEPT the rights to those judgments.

I do have a bill of sale from Regions Bank dated November 1, 2005, signed by Donald Nelson, VP of Regions Bank and notarized by Cheryl Cooperman (notary public) and witnessed by Cooperman and Barbara Grattan, the Special Assets Officer.

I will share this Bill of Sale with anyone interested as long as they are willing to sign an NDA because I am not interested in this being pasted all over the internet at this time.

[noonien]

That's awesome! I'd MUCH rather see Questman with the deed than the jerks at Netvillage. They've been no help at all. The file is removed. If anyone is seriously interested in it (as I learn, it likely contains nothing new or interesting) and Questman approves, I'll again make the link available.

Oh well!

[frcorey]

That's awesome! I'd MUCH rather see Questman with the deed than the jerks at Netvillage. They've been no help at all. The file is removed. If anyone is seriously interested in it (as I learn, it likely contains nothing new or interesting) and Questman approves, I'll again make the link available.

Oh well!

Plus, it has 2 or 3 viruses in it.
and questman prolly won't approve it anyways since there are a lot of cracks in it for stuff he owns now.

[icedragon]

See, the entertaiment source would have helped me.. I wonder if I can get that... Here's the situation:

As recently as WG 3.30, when I upgraded in 2006, Worldgroupware was able to give me an activation code for the Entertainment Collection based on my reg #.

Right now I'm in the process of moving my system to Worldgroup 5.1; and I've been talking to Nate at Netvillage, and he can't for the life of him remember the details for generating an activation code for the Entertainment Collection.

Unfortunately the ENT. Tele and everything that goes with it was a huge part of the 'culture' on my BBS; and while I do want to run the latest (And am even willing to pay for the no-ads version and ASUP!) -- well, I just can't get the ent. collection (GALENT.MCV, GALENT.MSG, etc) to run.

If NetVillage can't generate the code; the source might let me short-circuit it as I don't think the DLLs have changed since 6.22... And also since they don't seem to care about it anymore or don't even have the methods to support it...

... Any customer database should show that I've got a license to the Ent. Collection...

Just a shame that Netvillage may have lost whatever they used to generate this silly little code...

**EDIT** Crap, after some reading, I just realized there's a whole bunch of contention about who owns the rights to Worldgroup... Man, I'm sorry about this, and didn't want to rock any boats...

I'm just not sure where to go right now... I've sworn to stay legit since 1992 when I started with MajorBBS v5... and respecting who owns what... Definitely am not trying to get into the political mix --- just trying to enter a little code for software I did pay for!! My apologies if I stepped on any toes.. (Questman, etc.)...

[frcorey]

See, the entertaiment source would have helped me.. I wonder if I can get that... Here's the situation:

As recently as WG 3.30, when I upgraded in 2006, Worldgroupware was able to give me an activation code for the Entertainment Collection based on my reg #.

Right now I'm in the process of moving my system to Worldgroup 5.1; and I've been talking to Nate at Netvillage, and he can't for the life of him remember the details for generating an activation code for the Entertainment Collection.

Unfortunately the ENT. Tele and everything that goes with it was a huge part of the 'culture' on my BBS; and while I do want to run the latest (And am even willing to pay for the no-ads version and ASUP!) -- well, I just can't get the ent. collection (GALENT.MCV, GALENT.MSG, etc) to run.

If NetVillage can't generate the code; the source might let me short-circuit it as I don't think the DLLs have changed since 6.22... And also since they don't seem to care about it anymore or don't even have the methods to support it...

... Any customer database should show that I've got a license to the Ent. Collection...

Just a shame that Netvillage may have lost whatever they used to generate this silly little code...

**EDIT** Crap, after some reading, I just realized there's a whole bunch of contention about who owns the rights to Worldgroup... Man, I'm sorry about this, and didn't want to rock any boats...

I'm just not sure where to go right now... I've sworn to stay legit since 1992 when I started with MajorBBS v5... and respecting who owns what... Definitely am not trying to get into the political mix --- just trying to enter a little code for software I did pay for!! My apologies if I stepped on any toes.. (Questman, etc.)...

contact questman. he may be able to do it.

[Stoneslinger76]

contact questman. he may be able to do it.

Doesn't Metropolis own the entertainment collection? You may want to try over thier for your old code or updates.

[noonien]

I've never had much luck with Metro. They seem disinterested.

[Gardner Denver]

According to rumors on a MUD related forum, Metropolis may not actually exist anymore. Conversations with the parent company have shown that Shannon no longer works there, and her entire department was disolved. I can't verify this information nor do I have the desire to but hey, when was the last time Metro did anything anyhow?

Might be hard to tell if they still exist or not given their stellar track record for software updates & customer service.

[frcorey]

I've never had much luck with Metro. They seem disinterested.

yeah, they don't really care much anymore. the bbs market has pretty well gone back to a hobby. and they messed up majormud so bad that debugging takes most of thier time up.

[noonien]

So true, but still a blast. Some of my fondest computer memories are of MajorMUD and TW2002. My little brother was deployed in Iraq for a time and their bandwidth was so bad, text based games was about all they could play. Had a bunch of Marines playing MUD from crazy IP addresses. Good times!

[Questman]

I can generate Entertainment Collection codes. E-mail me at questman (at) themajorbbs.com

Metropolis does own the rights to it, and yes, they do not have the ability to generate the codes either. Metropolis still exists -- their primary business was never BBSes -- but Shannon did leave the company (unrelated to their interest in BBS software).

They still exist and own all rights however and the owner still will not sell them.

As for the source - there was a zip of the old Demo System's BBS5 library going around. Had interesting things in it, but nothing overly useful. There are a lot of modules that are missing that would only be recoverable by those who have v5 systems backed up... but I'm concerned there are fewer of those left.

[Gardner Denver]

Rick the information I'm getting is that nobody at Multiservice (The parent company of Metro) even knew what Metro was really 2 days ago. The company is not listed in their roster, and none of the employees of Metro are on their payroll anymore.

The people at Multiservice are supposedly talking to Southern Cross about selling the rights to MajorMUD for some insanely crazy amount of money, so they might be willing to discuss selling other titles they own with you as well.

I can provide you with contact information if you wish but I won't post it publicly for obvious reasons.

[dspain]

See, the entertaiment source would have helped me.. I wonder if I can get that... Here's the situation:

As recently as WG 3.30, when I upgraded in 2006, Worldgroupware was able to give me an activation code for the Entertainment Collection based on my reg #.

Right now I'm in the process of moving my system to Worldgroup 5.1; and I've been talking to Nate at Netvillage, and he can't for the life of him remember the details for generating an activation code for the Entertainment Collection.

Unfortunately the ENT. Tele and everything that goes with it was a huge part of the 'culture' on my BBS; and while I do want to run the latest (And am even willing to pay for the no-ads version and ASUP!) -- well, I just can't get the ent. collection (GALENT.MCV, GALENT.MSG, etc) to run.

If NetVillage can't generate the code; the source might let me short-circuit it as I don't think the DLLs have changed since 6.22... And also since they don't seem to care about it anymore or don't even have the methods to support it...

... Any customer database should show that I've got a license to the Ent. Collection...

Just a shame that Netvillage may have lost whatever they used to generate this silly little code...

**EDIT** Crap, after some reading, I just realized there's a whole bunch of contention about who owns the rights to Worldgroup... Man, I'm sorry about this, and didn't want to rock any boats...

I'm just not sure where to go right now... I've sworn to stay legit since 1992 when I started with MajorBBS v5... and respecting who owns what... Definitely am not trying to get into the political mix --- just trying to enter a little code for software I did pay for!! My apologies if I stepped on any toes.. (Questman, etc.)...

i have the entertainment nt sources. what ya need?

[dspain]

contact questman. he may be able to do it.

Doesn't Metropolis own the entertainment collection? You may want to try over thier for your old code or updates.

they own the nt rights i unlocked the 3.0 dos entertainment source and ported it.

3.0 dos ports so much easier than 2.0 dos -> 3.xx nt

[dspain]

According to rumors on a MUD related forum, Metropolis may not actually exist anymore. Conversations with the parent company have shown that Shannon no longer works there, and her entire department was disolved. I can't verify this information nor do I have the desire to but hey, when was the last time Metro did anything anyhow?

Might be hard to tell if they still exist or not given their stellar track record for software updates & customer service.

true story, the parent company dissolved all loose ends including the bbs department alot of the stuff we so badly want went in a box and was thrown in a storage.

i have a contact that i used as a mediator and offered a kings ransom and the answer was "i wouldn't even know where to look to find the discs"

galacticomm shit all over again.

but thats good news for the majormud rewrites.

[dspain]

Rick the information I'm getting is that nobody at Multiservice (The parent company of Metro) even knew what Metro was really 2 days ago. The company is not listed in their roster, and none of the employees of Metro are on their payroll anymore.

The people at Multiservice are supposedly talking to Southern Cross about selling the rights to MajorMUD for some insanely crazy amount of money, so they might be willing to discuss selling other titles they own with you as well.

I can provide you with contact information if you wish but I won't post it publicly for obvious reasons.

whoemever buys it i hope they dont sit on it and actually sell it/give it away.
having all the modules/code dont do no good if people cant access it.

the community is dying and i dont know if its able to be resurrected without reassurance.

just my two-cents

[frcorey]

Rick the information I'm getting is that nobody at Multiservice (The parent company of Metro) even knew what Metro was really 2 days ago. The company is not listed in their roster, and none of the employees of Metro are on their payroll anymore.

The people at Multiservice are supposedly talking to Southern Cross about selling the rights to MajorMUD for some insanely crazy amount of money, so they might be willing to discuss selling other titles they own with you as well.

I can provide you with contact information if you wish but I won't post it publicly for obvious reasons.

whoemever buys it i hope they dont sit on it and actually sell it/give it away.
having all the modules/code dont do no good if people cant access it.

the community is dying and i dont know if its able to be resurrected without reassurance.

just my two-cents

The bbs scene is not dead. it's sort of undead. like a zombie.
just wandering around looking for brains... lol

[dspain]

OUCH! was this cleared by Rick?

you mean only the stuff he owns right?

[dspain]

I know there are some ISVs here, and theres that everpresent "who the hell owns all this software?" thing goin on, dunno if that's been resolved or not,

Here`s some info.

NetVillage has historically refused to provide this documentation because it does not and can not exist.

This is easily determined by public records. The court cases that show the UCC loan documents from 1995 through 1997 when Tessier/Berg's Galacticomm Technologies Inc. refinanced the loan originated by Galacticomm Inc. The court then did judge that the bank can foreclose. On September 3, 2002 a certificate of title was produced showing Union Planters Bank as the owner of the rights (and physical property too).

Throughout all of the time all of the loans instructed Galacticomm never to allow the assets out of the state of Florida. In the judgement the judge instructed the sheriff to go get the stuff. I wonder if what NV did is actually a felony and/or federal offense since the property, not theirs, is technically stolen and then carried across state lines.

Finally the SEC documentation - easily obtainable thru EDGAR - establishes that the term "General Intangibles" does indeed cover intellectual property (this is standard in legal terms anyway) and most importantly highlights that the Union Planters interest is primary. All other claimants were subordinate to Union Planters' lien. This was acknowledged by Mssrs. Tessier, Berg, and company as well.

So finally all that is left to discover is what did Union Planters (now Regions) Bank do with their rights? I know that they were looking to find the assets and sue the thieves but they never put 2 and 2 together to realize that Netvillage was the one who had them. Their main concern was acquiring the money from the judgments that Galacticomm won against the companies doing the IPO - they were owed nearly $6mm in judgments! That money is now rightfully the bank's. When I bought the assets I bought everything EXCEPT the rights to those judgments.

I do have a bill of sale from Regions Bank dated November 1, 2005, signed by Donald Nelson, VP of Regions Bank and notarized by Cheryl Cooperman (notary public) and witnessed by Cooperman and Barbara Grattan, the Special Assets Officer.

I will share this Bill of Sale with anyone interested as long as they are willing to sign an NDA because I am not interested in this being pasted all over the internet at this time.

i have no doubt in my mind Rick owns it but as far as a bank not being able to put 2 and 2 together and get 4 is farfetched, bottom line was their loss recovery officers advised against further dealings because the more they "deal" with it, the more money they spend, the more money they spend on something thats not returning anything is called a "loss"

my grandmother has been the vp of suntrust financial since they were united virginia bank forever years ago, i actually went to her back in 2004 when rick first surfaced to see how much water his story was holding and when she heard the whole story she said the bank would gladly sell it off thats not anything any bank would want to hold on to unless they saw light at the end of the tunnel.

c'mon why would a bank care what happens to this today? they dont, so they cut their losses sold it to Rick for X amount and here we are.

[dspain]

That's awesome! I'd MUCH rather see Questman with the deed than the jerks at Netvillage. They've been no help at all. The file is removed. If anyone is seriously interested in it (as I learn, it likely contains nothing new or interesting) and Questman approves, I'll again make the link available.

Oh well!

Nate's more of a commercial type guy, no interest in the hobbyist sysops.
Ricks into the games and such, in a perfect world they should team up and handle it that way but my honest opinion is WG couldnt co-exist with the internet as a business platform, not in a world of isp's in a box and open source community platforms, sure you can take wg 3.xx and make your own facebook or aol but the invulnerabilities are endless and even if you compile the whole thing in vc 4.5 its still not on the same level as the java or .net platforms out there.

[dspain]

That's awesome! I'd MUCH rather see Questman with the deed than the jerks at Netvillage. They've been no help at all. The file is removed. If anyone is seriously interested in it (as I learn, it likely contains nothing new or interesting) and Questman approves, I'll again make the link available.

Oh well!

Plus, it has 2 or 3 viruses in it.
and questman prolly won't approve it anyways since there are a lot of cracks in it for stuff he owns now.

someone could always pull it down and go through it contacting the owners the best they can and get permission to post it, remove ricks stuff and then it could be a useful archive.

i might have it but i know i got 4 archives i been going through for 2months doing just that.

[dspain]

See, the entertaiment source would have helped me.. I wonder if I can get that... Here's the situation:

As recently as WG 3.30, when I upgraded in 2006, Worldgroupware was able to give me an activation code for the Entertainment Collection based on my reg #.

Right now I'm in the process of moving my system to Worldgroup 5.1; and I've been talking to Nate at Netvillage, and he can't for the life of him remember the details for generating an activation code for the Entertainment Collection.

Unfortunately the ENT. Tele and everything that goes with it was a huge part of the 'culture' on my BBS; and while I do want to run the latest (And am even willing to pay for the no-ads version and ASUP!) -- well, I just can't get the ent. collection (GALENT.MCV, GALENT.MSG, etc) to run.

If NetVillage can't generate the code; the source might let me short-circuit it as I don't think the DLLs have changed since 6.22... And also since they don't seem to care about it anymore or don't even have the methods to support it...

... Any customer database should show that I've got a license to the Ent. Collection...

Just a shame that Netvillage may have lost whatever they used to generate this silly little code...

**EDIT** Crap, after some reading, I just realized there's a whole bunch of contention about who owns the rights to Worldgroup... Man, I'm sorry about this, and didn't want to rock any boats...

I'm just not sure where to go right now... I've sworn to stay legit since 1992 when I started with MajorBBS v5... and respecting who owns what... Definitely am not trying to get into the political mix --- just trying to enter a little code for software I did pay for!! My apologies if I stepped on any toes.. (Questman, etc.)...

the entertainment collection for 3.0 dos ports to nt very nicely and its just a simple line removal to remove the activation check in the GALENT.LIB
this source can be unlocked from the 3.0 cd, i have one of the largest archives out there and theres prolly some controversial stuff in there if anyone sees something they think shouldnt be there send me a message anytime, other than that feel free to pull what you want with no ratios.

[dspain]

contact questman. he may be able to do it.

Doesn't Metropolis own the entertainment collection? You may want to try over thier for your old code or updates.

dont quote me but i could swear they were just resellers.

[dspain]

I've never had much luck with Metro. They seem disinterested.

yeah, they don't really care much anymore. the bbs market has pretty well gone back to a hobby. and they messed up majormud so bad that debugging takes most of thier time up.

my mud engine for wgnt ships with an extended source code where you can modify the systems yourself just not the core components as they are lib files and you could make your own majormud with just mediocre c knowledge.

i already got 4 sysops who have displayed interest for that exact reason.

time for majormud, telearena, soc, the rose, all of em to evolve.

[dspain]

Rick the information I'm getting is that nobody at Multiservice (The parent company of Metro) even knew what Metro was really 2 days ago. The company is not listed in their roster, and none of the employees of Metro are on their payroll anymore.

The people at Multiservice are supposedly talking to Southern Cross about selling the rights to MajorMUD for some insanely crazy amount of money, so they might be willing to discuss selling other titles they own with you as well.

I can provide you with contact information if you wish but I won't post it publicly for obvious reasons.

whoemever buys it i hope they dont sit on it and actually sell it/give it away.
having all the modules/code dont do no good if people cant access it.

the community is dying and i dont know if its able to be resurrected without reassurance.

just my two-cents

The bbs scene is not dead. it's sort of undead. like a zombie.
just wandering around looking for brains... lol

agreed its not dead but too much younger cats dont know what telnet is anymore so if it cant be viewed through their ipod they dont know how to work it

[Stoneslinger76]

my mud engine for wgnt ships with an extended source code where you can modify the systems yourself just not the core components as they are lib files and you could make your own majormud with just mediocre c knowledge.

i already got 4 sysops who have displayed interest for that exact reason.

time for majormud, telearena, soc, the rose, all of em to evolve.

Hey Dan is this a new one or the OBDC driven one?
If its something new maybe you can update your ISVARC file area
on the Swamp bbs.

[dspain]

my mud engine for wgnt ships with an extended source code where you can modify the systems yourself just not the core components as they are lib files and you could make your own majormud with just mediocre c knowledge.

i already got 4 sysops who have displayed interest for that exact reason.

time for majormud, telearena, soc, the rose, all of em to evolve.

Hey Dan is this a new one or the OBDC driven one?
If its something new maybe you can update your ISVARC file area
on the Swamp bbs.

i actually been rewriting all my old stuff to be better coded since my skills have definately ijmproved over when alot of that old stuff was written.

i will update it upon completion of the rewrites, prolly 3-4 more days.

and this product is btrieve driven, the odbc game was a telearena engine called Tele-Arena SQL some say its a touch laggy, i think its about as sluggish as majormud, its online for anyone to see on my server azonebbs.dyndns.org "Tele-Arena SQL" /go sql i think.

[frcorey]

my mud engine for wgnt ships with an extended source code where you can modify the systems yourself just not the core components as they are lib files and you could make your own majormud with just mediocre c knowledge.

i already got 4 sysops who have displayed interest for that exact reason.

time for majormud, telearena, soc, the rose, all of em to evolve.

Hey Dan is this a new one or the OBDC driven one?
If its something new maybe you can update your ISVARC file area
on the Swamp bbs.

i actually been rewriting all my old stuff to be better coded since my skills have definately ijmproved over when alot of that old stuff was written.

i will update it upon completion of the rewrites, prolly 3-4 more days.

and this product is btrieve driven, the odbc game was a telearena engine called Tele-Arena SQL some say its a touch laggy, i think its about as sluggish as majormud, its online for anyone to see on my server azonebbs.dyndns.org "Tele-Arena SQL" /go sql i think.

after all these years btrieve is still one of the fastest.

[Questman]

Metropolis owns the Entertainment Edition as of 1997 lock stock and barrel, not just DOS version but the whole thing.

The sale contract between GComm and Metro is in the public record.

[repstein]

Metropolis owns the Entertainment Edition as of 1997 lock stock and barrel, not just DOS version but the whole thing.

The sale contract between GComm and Metro is in the public record.

All true. In fact, I believe GComm had to get permission from the bank to sell those assets to Metro since the bank held the lien. This was at the time the company was attempting to go public and was trying to divest itself of all non-core assets. Prior to that, I purchased assets from Galacticomm (Yannick Tessier's assets -- High Society BBS) as part of the initial divestiture.

Randy