Microsoft Releases Zork I, II, and III as Open Source
â–Ľ Summary
– Zork I, II, and III have been released under the MIT License, making their source code open source.
– Microsoft, which owns the Zork IP through its acquisition of Activision, led this initiative with its Open Source Programs Office and Xbox team.
– Only the code is open source; commercial packaging, marketing assets, and trademarks remain proprietary.
– The open-source grant was implemented via pull requests to historical repositories in collaboration with digital archivist Jason Scott.
– This resolves previous licensing uncertainties, as the code was publicly available since 2019 but without a clear license.
The legendary text adventure series Zork I, II, and III has officially entered the open-source realm, released under the permissive MIT License by Microsoft. This significant move preserves a foundational piece of interactive fiction history, making the original code freely available for developers, historians, and enthusiasts to study, modify, and build upon.
This release stems from a collaborative effort between Microsoft’s Xbox and Activision divisions, coordinated through the company’s Open Source Programs Office. While the underlying source code is now open, commercial packaging, marketing materials, trademarks, and brand assets remain proprietary and are not included in this grant.
Instead of establishing new repositories, the teams opted to contribute directly to the existing historical codebases. Working alongside Jason Scott, a prominent digital archivist from the Internet Archive, they submitted official pull requests to the original Zork repositories. These updates incorporate a clear MIT License and formally document the open-source contribution, as explained in a joint announcement from Stacy Haffner, Director of Microsoft’s OSPO, and Scott Hanselman, VP of Developer Community.
Microsoft’s ownership of the Zork intellectual property came through its acquisition of Activision in 2022. Activision had previously gained control of the franchise when it purchased the original publisher, Infocom, during the late 1980s. Interestingly, there was an earlier attempt to sell Zork’s publishing rights directly to Microsoft decades ago, driven in part by founder Bill Gates’s known enthusiasm for the game. Although that particular deal did not materialize at the time, the IP ultimately found its way to Microsoft many years later.
It is worth noting that this is not the first public appearance of Zork’s source code. Jason Scott had uploaded it to GitHub back in 2019, but its legal status was ambiguous. At that time, Activision or Microsoft retained the right to issue a takedown notice, creating uncertainty around its use. With the new official licensing, that legal ambiguity is now completely resolved, ensuring the code remains accessible without the threat of removal.
(Source: Ars Technica)