Archivist and filmmaker Jason Scott is currently reading the entirety of the original Leisure Suit Larry source code live on Twitch. As I write this, he's currently reading code related to the purchase and application of condoms. Nice.
Scott has undertaken the task in order to encourage donations to three organisations responsible for safeguarding online history: the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Video Game History Foundation and the non-profit library Internet Archive. At the time of writing, he's already been going at it for just over seven hours.
Hey there! What's your sign? Mine says "I'll be doing a historical context and reading of the source code of Leisure Suit Larry at 12 EST (Less than 30mins from now) at https://t.co/CZ6CJW1WfA in full costume, to encourage donations to @EFF @GameHistoryOrg and @internetarchiveDecember 18, 2018
Last week, Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe attempted to auction off the original source code for the lewd 1987 point-and-click adventure. Bids were going strong, but lawyers working on behalf of Activision eventually intervened. As Andy reported, Activision acknowledged that it doesn't own the Leisure Suit Larry name: it worries that code is shared with other titles it does own, including King's Quest.
But never mind, because Jason Scott has our back. Assuming this Twitch stream will be archived, the source code will be forever available, assuming anyone has the time and energy to transcribe it.
You can watch the stream over here. Scott operates the website textfiles.com, and has directed documentaries including BBS: The Documentary and GET LAMP.
