This was a readme that I always thought turned out particularly nice for a fairly simple TI-89 RPG-ish fight simulator:
http://www.ticalc.org/cgi-bin/zipview?89/basic/games/rpg/battle/rpgfight.zip;RPGFight_0.10.00/rpgfight.txt

Readmes for most of my other programs use this same general style since I like consistency.

I've had a history of being (sometimes excessively) prolific with writing as well as having an unusual enjoyment of reading manuals, so my readmes tend to be looong.

I know I may appear at times not to care since I don't really get involved with many of these issues and haven't been around here all that much lately.  However, that isn't the case.  The truth is, over the last couple of years I have found myself thinking about you quite a lot, even when I'm away from the computer and doing completely unrelated things. You're free to believe and do what you want, though personally, I don't believe that it is possible for anyone to be “worthless”. It seems to me that there are still plenty of people who love and care about you, which includes me.

Through my life I've heard endless stories about people in seemingly hopeless situations like yours, but things turned around when they hung in there long enough. The way I believe things work is that if you try to at least have hope that there's even a microscopic chance of things working out, you at least leave that chance, but if you decide to banish *all* hope, you pretty much force the door closed forever.

If nothing else, just remember that regardless of what you do or think about yourself or whether you lose hope or keep it, I personally will never lose hope for you.

I have to agree with that. US Congress has repeatedly extended copyright further and further over the last century, defeating the spirit of the Constitution when it says that Congress may “for limited times” (my emphasis) enforce copyright on content. However, when the case went to court, the judges ultimately did not agree that this activity was in violation, and so we're left with the situation we have now, where copyright essentially lasts forever in terms of human lifespans.

Technically, as others have said, using source code could potentially be copyright infringement if the legal entity holds a copyright on it and still exists, but it can be hard to know for sure.

Making a clone of a game (writing the code from scratch entirely by oneself) may not violate copyright per sé (though I'm not a lawyer so I could be wrong!), but it could be a trademark infringement. There have been companies that have occasionally written to ticalc.org and asked us to remove certain programs due to this; recently, the developer of FreeDOS did this for a file in the archives with this name, and apparently Mattell has done this with 8-ball programs a few years back, and there was that rumor once upon a time that Kirk Meyer was made to stop working on a Monopoly program for the same reason. Most of the time, they don't bother, but if they do write to us and complain, we may have to comply depending on the situation (and what Magnus tells us to do).

Again, though, I can make no warranty or guarantee about what I just said. If you need to absolutely know for certain, only a qualified IP lawyer would be able to tell you for sure.

how many people on omnimaga are 68k programers?

I do/have done quite a bit of 68K BASIC/C programming, except that I keep having so many other projects and hobbies (both calc- and non-calc-related) that I rarely actually finish anything. I've never had a chance to look at NewProg, though I am interested in hearing people's experiences with it if they try it.

O.o They're still there, but not linked to...

http://www.ticalc.org/pub/83plus/ for example.

That link works for me.  

One known issue is that the updated file list on the front page isn't updated and contains broken links. I somehow managed to crash the page generation system (again) and have to wait for Magnus to fix the bug.   Update: Now fixed.

Any other oddities are unknown bugs, so please let me know.

For the curious, the full list of changes on April Fools Day was:
* Random (but still mostly readable) color combinations on every fileinfo, directory, and author page
* Added 83+/84+ TI-BASIC quadratic solvers directories: best, caps, friday, grayscale, noq, pointless, prime, timeless
* Added root directory directories: abacus, sliderule
* Added root directory link to 83+/84+ TI-BASIC quadratic solvers

I considered adding HP, Casio, Sharp, etc. sections as well, but didn't want people to get fooled and take it too seriously, so I didn't. There was some discussion of a news article, and I was hoping someone would post one, but it sadly didn't happen (everyone was probably too busy). I'm glad I did something with the file archive at least—it wasn't the coolest thing in the world, but if it wasn't for that there would have been nothing at all on April Fools.

I didn't follow it too closely, but the TI OS upgrade joke done here seems like by far the best one.

Yeah, you don't want to go too far. I personally find those “have to scroll to the bottom before clicking Accept” things already annoying enough, and they don't make me any more likely to read them. Limit the scroll rate, and I would very likely not bother with accepting or signing up at all.

Now if only lawyers would actually wake up and learn how to trim down the fluff enough to avoid scrolling altogether, maybe someone would actually bother reading EULAs.