Petition CA for MTW source code?

[caravel]

ID Software released the source code for most of their earlier games, including Q1, Q2 and Q3 : http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/

Rebellion software released the source code for the first AvP game.

All of these are games that made huge profits, have huge and very real modding communities and in the case of the Quake series, spawned hundreds of other titles many of them free: http://www.urbanterror.net/news.php

The reason that the CA won't release the source code to STW (and MTW - but first things first) is anyone's guess. IMHO it's because we're dealing with a company that cares little for it's fans, especially those long term fans that bought the games and put CA where it is today.

When the source code is released, it does not mean that the game becomes free. In the case of the Quake games you have the necessary code to build the binaries and libs that the game needs. You then need the game media (the pak files containing the textures, models, weapons etc) in order to get the game running. To get to this point you need to buy the game OR download it illegally. But people still download it illegally anyway - so this would be no different to them releasing a patch.

It would work exactly the same for CA:

1) They would release the source code for the binaries.

2) The open source community would immediately sieze on this and:

a) Fix the problems in the existing game engine, port it to other platforms (GNU/Linux, MacOS, etc)

b) Start improving AI, adding functionality etc.

3) Joe public wants to download and run (let's call it) Open Medieval - Total War (for now). He gets either the win32, Mac or Linux build from sourceforge - installs runs and.... nothing

4) The user then reads the manual and realises that he needs the original game. He doesn't need the original windows binaries but he does need the game media files (images, sounds, scripts etc) and the licence.

5) Once he has these, which he pays for, he's up and running. He may be a Mac user or a Linux user, therefore he's a customer CA would otherwise not have had.

Tried, tested, works. Now tell me why CA won't release the source code for a 9 year old game?