Paragon Studios Offices...the ruins?

[Aggelakis]

Flowbee.  A silly hair cutting tool that was once offered only in TV commercials as a simple way to do haircuts at home without leaving a mess since it attaches to your home vacuum cleaner.

Posi auctioned off, IIRC, the right to cut his hair with one at a herocon.

It was an auction to get THEIR hair cut with a Flowbee BY Positron. But the winner was a cueball, so they improvised.

[srmalloy]

Although noone will ever admit to it (for good reason), I am sure that more than a few non-BitLockered NexStars or equivalent left the building with all sorts of game builds and tools code.

Test tools and builds like loopback clients and selfhostable client+server builds were obviously commonplace in their shop (like any software house). A lot of people worked from home over the years on enlistments that were on laptops or home machines. Standalone build trees are commonplace.

I don't expect that anyone would have had a 'spare' set of server backups at the time of the shutdown, but I would be willing to bet that there is at least one full set of client and server sources (production, beta, and internal) and server databases that was deliberately maintained as an offsite backup by the devs, plus any number of development environments on various computers that survived the purge. And I wouldn't put it past one of the 'surviving' admins to have made an extra set of server backups either as of 9/1/12, or shortly before shutdown, and smuggled them offsite -- but I'm not certain enough of it to bet on it.

[mikoroshi]

What surviving admins?  There were two people at the studio in California for the last several weeks, the community dude (forgot his handle) and the security guard who shadowed his every move.  Most everyone else was given the boot the day the shutdown was announced months beforehand.  There were people from NC corporate going from desk to desk taking things like computer hard drives, flash drives, etc., while the Paragon staff was in a meeting being told what was happening.

Plus, you know, the actual database and game servers were in Texas or something.

Nice to wish but extremely unlikely.

[Xieveral]

What surviving admins?  There were two people at the studio in California for the last several weeks, the community dude (forgot his handle) and the security guard who shadowed his every move.  Most everyone else was given the boot the day the shutdown was announced months beforehand.  There were people from NC corporate going from desk to desk taking things like computer hard drives, flash drives, etc., while the Paragon staff was in a meeting being told what was happening.

Plus, you know, the actual database and game servers were in Texas or something.

Nice to wish but extremely unlikely.

Someone could've had a couple drives in their pocket during the meeting or laying around at home and some of the staff learned of the closure a day before the meeting and announcement, its possible they rescued some information.

[redgiant]

Most software development build environments are file system enlistments on disk, checked in/out from a central repository. You build and test from them, all day, every day. That's what a dev works on all the time. PVCS, Subversion, Perforce/SourceDepot (Microsoft uses), VSTS all act like this.

There's nothing to smuggle anywhere really; just keep whatever disk enlistments you already had on a home machine, external drive or laptop. You could already build whatever you liked, from cityofheroes.exe to the server executables and libraries.

I'd be shocked if there aren't quite a few folks who could build the client or server on a whim right now. But again, you will never know of them because its a no-no to admit to it.

[Little Green Frog]

Most software development build environments are file system enlistments on disk, checked in/out from a central repository. You build and test from them, all day, every day. That's what a dev works on all the time. PVCS, Subversion, Perforce/SourceDepot (Microsoft uses), VSTS all act like this.

There's nothing to smuggle anywhere really; just keep whatever disk enlistments you already had on a home machine, external drive or laptop. You could already build whatever you liked, from cityofheroes.exe to the server executables and libraries.

I'd be shocked if there aren't quite a few folks who could build the client or server on a whim right now. But again, you will never know of them because its a no-no to admit to it.

You are not always permitted by the company you are working for to keep the source code on an unauthorized machine. It may cost you your job if you fail to comply and you can even face some legal charges if appropriate clause was part of your employment contract.

[Xieveral]

"Not permitted" doesn't always stop people.

[TimtheEnchanter]

If a person is caught in the Army dump taking things they can and have been charged with "theft of government property" which is a Federal offense if civilian and serious offense under the UCMJ, even though it was considered trash and thrown out.  And I know a couple of people in federal prison for taking stuff (old office desks in this case) that the army threw in the dump. Each got 5 years.

Sad.. really sad. The most they should be able to convict you of is trespassing. You throw something out, it's not yours anymore. Just imagine how much chaos we could have in the long run with something remaining property even after disposed of. Potential lawsuits coming up 10 years later after somebody stumbles on something sticking out of a landfill? Crazy. Absolutely crazy.

[Little Green Frog]

"Not permitted" doesn't always stop people.

No, of course not. But it is quite effective in professional environments. After all how are you going to convince your potential future employer that it is a good idea to hire you even after you've been caught breaching your contract while at your previous position?

[JaguarX]

Sad.. really sad. The most they should be able to convict you of is trespassing. You throw something out, it's not yours anymore. Just imagine how much chaos we could have in the long run with something remaining property even after disposed of. Potential lawsuits coming up 10 years later after somebody stumbles on something sticking out of a landfill? Crazy. Absolutely crazy.

tell me about it.

[Valjean]

It was an auction to get THEIR hair cut with a Flowbee BY Positron. But the winner was a cueball, so they improvised.

Actually it wasn't an auction at all. It was a character creator contest. The winner got a trip to the Pummit, 5 years of gametime, and their hair cut by Positron. But when it turned out he was bald, that's when the hair cut got switched around.

[Lightslinger]

All this talk of a hypothetical, anonymous rogue dev, aka The Greatest Hero, leaking a copy of the CoH code reminded me of something.

When WebOS failed HP eventually made it open source. I'm positive HP pumped much, much, much more money into WebOS than was ever spent on CoH yet they still released it.

Imagine if NCsoft was 1/2 that generous...wow.