I just sent an email to Paul Isaac, Jorg Neumann, and Phil Wattenbarger. Hopefully I will receive some sort of reply. My name has been deleted from the transcript. In the actual email, I also included a handful of links to Discovery's modDB page and the like. Here is the body of the letter.
Code:
Hello,
My name is _________ and I, along with many others, am a frequent player of your game Freelancer. Despite this game's age today, it has nevertheless attracted significant attention over the years for its accessibility to "modders", and several prominent, permanent communities have come into being dedicated to the development of mods for Freelancer. These projects have accomplished and continue to accomplish great work. The mod community to which I belong is called the Discovery mod. In brief, the Discovery mod team has facilitated the growth of a sophisticated roleplaying environment complete with player factions, player diplomacy, and shifting tides of war. Allow me to indicate the popularity of this movement by pointing to the fact that the primary server for this particular mod has expanded the original server size from 16 players to 200 players, and this server is usually packed during peak time. These mod servers and a new global list server are supported entirely by donations and player efforts.
Despite its glory which we have come to appreciate, Freelancer is old and could be improved upon. Yet there is only so much that can be done to modify the core game without any actual ability to change the inner workings of the game. The ability to completely overhaul and update Freelancer hinges on access to the game's source code.
To my understanding, the rights to this source code were acquired by Microsoft along with the acquisition of Digital Anvil which was publicly announced in the Winter of 2000. However, community effort to ascertain the future of this source code has been disorganized and jumbled at best. Some question whether Freelancer's code will be tucked away in a box, never to be heard of again. Others ponder whether Microsoft Game Studios would ever consider releasing the Freelancer source code under a public license to enable the continued development of these gaming and roleplaying communities. Other games for which the source code has been "freed" have gone on to blossom into self-sufficient and up-to-date projects which offer players an immersive and interactive gaming experience.
I am not sure whether you have been approached by others about this matter in the past. However, I politely ask you to consider my request to provide me and by extension the Freelancer community at large the next steps which we should take with regards to opening a dialogue with Microsoft about this source code. Any information or contact details which you might happen to have would be wholly appreciated by the entirety of the Freelancer community. The most important thing is knowing the next step to take.
