About Prince of Persia

The source code (documented assembly language) was backed up to 3.5 disks and shelved by its creator in 1990. And then misplaced. After the search was long abandoned then unreadable disks were found. After a restoration effort, on April 7, 2012, Jordan Mechner published the source code on github. A vaguely stated licensed for "study, modification, running it, etc." was specified. This statement also emphasised that "Ubisoft alone has the right to make and distribute Prince of Persia games." But this source code actually remains licensed under its original license, which is fully proprietary, which by its by definition not legally available for study, modification, running, etc... So any body who studies, modifies, and/or then runs the code risks being sued, arrested, and/or jailed at some future date. Trademarks still apply (owned by UbiSoft), copyright is still in force, UbiSoft still retains exclusive license. Commercial use has not been expressly granted. In fact, no uses at all have been legally granted. The license fails to mention derivative works so copyright law is in effect for those. This means merely looking at the source code can taint (legally) any thing a developer ever does for the rest of their career and actually creating a derivative work would be illegal.