I still have a Standard MIDI File toolbox from Music Quest, anno 1990. The source code is copyright. I want to rewrite part of the Pascal source code in Visual Basic and release a tuition tool into the public domain, including my source code, so that others may use the code anyway they wish.

But I can find, despite extensive searching on Google, nothing to link back to the now defunct company. All I know is that it was taken over by Opcode, which itself then either disappeared or was taken over.

Does anyone have ANY further information about Music Quest's demise? I really would like to ask permission from somebody to be able to reuse some of their code in translated form, otherwise it will mean no one benefits and the code will forever remain in limbo.

If musicquest.com is/was their website, then you may be able to use the following contacts:
http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=musicquest.com

I would simply go ahead and write the program if it is not a 100% "word-for-word" translation of the source code. Their copyright only protects their specific expression of the ideas that lie behind the product. You are free to express those ideas in a different form.

Hi, mahlzeit! (how many times did I say that whilst working as a guest worker at Ford-Werke in Cologne!) Thanks, yes, I agree that the translation is by no means word-for-word. It could not be, for Pascal has functionality by design that is not available to Visual Basic, therefore one has to come up with workarounds, which I did. Nevertheless, any nit-picky lawyer with an eye on his (or her!) bottom line might be convinced through perusal of the original (Pascal) and the conversion (heavily modified VB) of some indenticality. I know I am being a bit of a pedant, but the attitude has managed to get me through 45 years of driving without any points on my licence!

Also, it is worth pointing out that the ideas they in their Pascal and I in my VB are expressing are expressed in yet further ways in th official Microsoft documentation, and in numerous other documents and products, including a complete book on the subject (Maximum MIDI).

Same here, although for me it was at Siemens in Munich.

There are only so many ways you can implement certain problems so if their implementation is a fairly obvious one, I would have no qualms about copying it.