[Barnacle Bill]

I see open source as a noble thing for a company to do if they have dropped support for a popular game, including where they have dropped an eagerly awaited game before release (unless they had to pay somebody for a license to make that game, like Star Trek or B5). By "popular", I mean "has a dedicated group of fans willing & able to do something with it", which is not the same thing as large numbers of people who will buy new products (if those existed, the company probably wouldn't drop the game).

If they are not going to support the game anymore themselves, they are not losing money if somebody else does. This is especially true if they have dropped the entire genre (like the mass "flight" of the big companies from air combat sims). You could argue that really good "free" mods of an older game might "steal" sales from a new game in the same genre. I don't think so, but I can understand that concern. If they're not going to be in the genre at all anymore, though, I see no reason not to release the source code, or at least sell it cheap to a small outfit of fans willing & capable of carrying on with it. SSI has done something like this with its older wargames.

I can't see any commercial game still being supported being released as open source code, though. I can see enlisting the help of technically qualified fans who are willing to help as a labor of love (i.e. without payment or a share of the profits), if there are any such volunteers who will sign an appropriate non-disclosure agreement. This is really kind of like "beta testers plus". If any of them turn out to be really, really good, I might consider inviting them to become partners. That is a business decision - if their contribution grows the overall profit enough that my reduced % with the new split is more actual $ than before, taking on a new partner is a win-win. Don't forget this is a business. It is great to provide something people want, get paid for it and be doing something you enjoy all the while. You still have to make a living, though. That is what I would look at it, if I were running MM.