Hey guys. So as a sysop I'm always looking for fun door games to add to my board. Often they're shareware and that's okay but sometimes I'd like to register. In a few cases I've found that if I search hard enough the original author took the time to post the door as freeware but in most cases there is (it seems) no way to get a registered copy.

The last example, one that got me thinking on this topic, is a little mini-golf game called "bbsgolf". I even thought maybe I'd just write a snailmail letter to the address on the registration "card" file and see if the guy still lives there and happens to have a copy of the registered version lying around in his attic. But, after a few minutes of checking public records I saw that only a couple years after he released the door he got divorced, sold the house so there's no way to contact him (assuming he's still alive even)

I suppose I could try to crack it but I thought it would be nice to go another route and just throw out some "feelers" in the bbs world to see if any of you were, in a past life, a bbs door author and if we could start to build a registry of sorts of either a) freeware versions, b) updated registration contact information (for sysops willing to pay such as myself), or c) a serial # for authors that don't care to get paid but also don't want to try to
re-code your game to remove shareware limitations.

Or, alternatively, using the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, maybe some of you know someone who was an author (or someone more likely to know someone, etc...) and you could let them know that bbs's still exist, your doors are still being downloaded, installed, and played, and there are still sysops wanting registered copies.

More than wanting to have registered versions on my board what I really want is to keep these games from falling off the face of the earth. I think the shareware copies will be around for a long time to come and I'm grateful for that but the full versions are becoming extinct.

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Hello Divarin!

** On Sunday 23.05.21 - 07:38, Divarin wrote to All:

More than wanting to have registered versions on my board
what I really want is to keep these games from falling off
the face of the earth. I think the shareware copies will
be around for a long time to come and I'm grateful for that
but the full versions are becoming extinct.

Everything is going to fall off the earth 03:14:07 UTC on 19
January 2038. :(

Having the files is fine and dandy, but will there be
sufficient systems still around to even use them?

The closest anyone is likely experience that are YT video clips
of such things, or a lone computer in a museum that no one
would be allowed to touch. :(


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Re: Shareware Doors
By: Ogg to Divarin on Mon May 24 2021 07:57:00

Everything is going to fall off the earth 03:14:07 UTC on 19
January 2038. :(

Having the files is fine and dandy, but will there be
sufficient systems still around to even use them?

The closest anyone is likely experience that are YT video clips
of such things, or a lone computer in a museum that no one
would be allowed to touch. :(

Okay but what about before 2038? like right now, or next year?

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DIVARIN wrote to ALL <=-

Hey guys. So as a sysop I'm always looking for fun door games to add to
my board. Often they're shareware and that's okay but sometimes I'd
like to register. In a few cases I've found that if I search hard
enough the original author took the time to post the door as freeware
but in most cases there is (it seems) no way to get a registered copy.

The last example, one that got me thinking on this topic, is a little mini-golf game called "bbsgolf". I even thought maybe I'd just write a

<snip snap>

Oh wow! I truly hope you find him/her, but beyond that that's a cool thing you're trying to do! Give credit (and dollars) where it is due! :-)




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