New Kickstart 3.9.1 68k on the way

[guest11527]

The words "stupid" and "copyright law" tend to go awfully well together these days, though. But just because one fails to take the laws seriously it does not follow that they do not apply in this case.

Unfortunately, and I also believe that an owner should make use of its rights to make them applicable. Unfortunately, that's not the case, and yes, maybe that's truly stupid, but I can't fix it. AmigaOs would, indeed, profit a lot if all the copyright nonsense would not apply and their owners would understand that they could possibly profit from the community by following a more open approach, not even necessarily open source.  

However, in this particular case, all the laws aside, the whole situation could be resolved just by better communication, and a cooperative approach instead of the Guerilla tactics approach to the problem. Heck, it even worked for me.

Cosmos might be a brilliant assembler coder, but he's a lousy negotiator. That goes probably for many of us here (including myself) but at some point you need to realize that talking to people and listening to their motivations might help your project more than just starting to program and throwing your work into the internet - without asking a couple of serious questions and approaching the right people to clear up the situation.

[kolla]

Have there yet been any legal dispute over such things in "amiga land"? No? If noone takes any action to upheld the copyrights of the works, then for all practical purposes there is no longer any copyright on the works, regardless of the 70 years mickey mouse law.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

@Cosmos

can you please clarify whether you are merely distributing patches to commercial software or the commercial software itself already patched? if the former that's one thing, but if you're actually distributing components like exec.library and so forth, that is illegal. period.

-- eliyahu

I must have a half dozen of his patches on my system.  Every single one has been just the patch file, and required a copy of the original file to work.  I've also got some of @Thomas Richter's stuff on my system, as well.  With the way these two go at it, it's a wonder my Amiga hasn't exploded!  

You guys are making a mountain out of a molehill, here, IMHO.  Bunch of cranky old men arguing about copyright law for long-dead software.  Life is too short!  :furious:

[eliyahu]

I must have a half dozen of his patches on my system.  Every single one has been just the patch file, and required a copy of the original file to work.  I've also got some of @Thomas Richter's stuff on my system, as well.  With the way these two go at it, it's a wonder my Amiga hasn't exploded!  

You guys are making a mountain out of a molehill, here, IMHO.  Bunch of cranky old men arguing about copyright law for long-dead software.  Life is too short!  :furious:

i know, i know. :lol:

but whether or not H&P are enforcing their ownership rights or not, as a site, we have rules about promoting the distribution of commercial software. so i gotta ask.

-- eliyahu

[olsen]

Have there yet been any legal dispute over such things in "amiga land"? No? If noone takes any action to upheld the copyrights of the works, then for all practical purposes there is no longer any copyright on the works, regardless of the 70 years mickey mouse law.

From what I gather, it is not quite so straightforward. Copyright persists even if the owner does not enforce it. It persists even if the owner cannot be found (orphaned works).

This is in fact one of the "bugs" of the framework. For example, the unpublished letters of British soldiers who perished in WWI cannot be shown in UK libraries and museums because copyright protection for these "orphaned works" will persist until the year 2039. And that's a consequence of copyright reform, as otherwise the protection granted would have expired following 70 years after the death of the respective author (which would be around, say, as late as 1918 plus 70 years and a bit = 1988/1989).

Even if you wish things were different, and if you decided to ignore the possible ramifications, there may still be consequences to your actions for acting against the law.

[olsen]

I must have a half dozen of his patches on my system.  Every single one has been just the patch file, and required a copy of the original file to work.  I've also got some of @Thomas Richter's stuff on my system, as well.  With the way these two go at it, it's a wonder my Amiga hasn't exploded!  

You guys are making a mountain out of a molehill, here, IMHO.  Bunch of cranky old men arguing about copyright law for long-dead software.  Life is too short!  :furious:

Even if we accepted that the law's authority is rather shaky and has negative side-effects (orphaned works, no motive to preserve them, etc.), our position will be weaker if we work against the rules of the law. You can't sell it, you cannot sell derivate works, you're basically reduced to bootlegging. This is not how you care for the Amiga, in my opinion.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

You can't sell it, you cannot sell derivate works, you're basically reduced to bootlegging.

Who's selling anything here? As Cosmos has stated multiple times, all his patches are free to download. He only pulled them recently because (as the quote on his website said, anyway) someone else was selling them over on EAB.

Hell, I've been downloading his patches for years. After all this kerfluffle, I feel like I should probably send the guy a donation or something, LOL.

................................................
 
 IMHO it's because of all of this public slagging that developers get fed up and leave our community. So, a round of applause, everyone. Good job!

[ferrellsl]

Even if we accepted that the law's authority is rather shaky and has negative side-effects (orphaned works, no motive to preserve them, etc.), our position will be weaker if we work against the rules of the law. You can't sell it, you cannot sell derivate works, you're basically reduced to bootlegging. This is not how you care for the Amiga, in my opinion.

He isn't selling it or bootlegging.  He's charging for his time and labor in patching ROMs that people already own.  And please don't speak for "us" or refer to "our position".  It's the same bunch of trolling arm-chair attorneys that hijack threads such as this every time they get the chance and shut down any technical discussion. I'm so tired of this constant legal bickering by these same trolls that I'm ready to close my account.....oh wait, Amiga.org has no way to do that.....stuck in Hotel California...erm Amiga that is.

[Pentad]

I am not a lawyer. The last time I had a look at how these things play out my impression was as follows:

1) There's the Berne convention, which covers works created by authors and those created for and owned by corporations. Protection covers 70 years after the death of the author, and 120 years after the creation of the work as owned by a corporation.

2) The protection/restrictions given by this legal framework do apply to citizens of the member states of the European Union.

3) Ownership of the Amiga operating system and its components, as well as works created for the AmigaOS updates 3.5 and 3.9 which may be relevant here is rather well-defined.

4) Authors and owners of said Amiga operating system and AmigaOS update 3.5/3.9 components may not want to enforce these rights, or may not be in a position to do so. It does not follow that their rights, in particular the moral rights of the authors, are forfeit if they do not enforce them.

Olsen,

As a University Professor I had to teach basic copyright and patent law.  They are very complicated with an endless list of exceptions depending on certain situations.  I could list all the ones that come to mind but I just don't care enough about this thread.  :-)

However, without comparing and contrasting French and American copyright laws I have no idea what parts of copyright law are the same in both countries.  However, I can tell you from starting my own company that patents laws are very different from the US and Europe.  Having experienced that, I am skeptical copyright laws in the US are the same in France.

My super objective was really pointing out that one cannot blindly apply US Law to the rest of the world.  Though, it does seem like we do that too often.

Thanks for the reply though!

-P

[psxphill]

Have there yet been any legal dispute over such things in "amiga land"? No? If noone takes any action to upheld the copyrights of the works, then for all practical purposes there is no longer any copyright on the works, regardless of the 70 years mickey mouse law.

That is not true. In the same way that thieves who don't get caught have no legal right over what they stole.
 
 You could argue that it's unlikely that you'll be prosecuted, but not that the copyright doesn't exist (unlike trademarks, it doesn't have to be defended to exist).

[Ratte]

It's true that back in the day I ran Kickstart 3.0 from an A1200 on an A500 with a phase vi 14mhz 68000 (I didn't try 3.1 as I bought the a500 upgrade). It's true that they cherry picked different releases for each platform based on which worked at the time they submitted the 3.1 roms to manufacturing (I'm sure that years ago there was an description written by someone at commodore about why they picked each one). it's true that they could have produced one that worked in them all if there was a financial reason to.

The Blizzard Turbo Memory Board (68000/68010 @ 14MHz) with 512kb shadow memory worked with a 40.63 on my a1000.
A1200/4000 versions failed.

[Ratte]

The 'C' compilers used at the time were not considered sufficiently mature to produce '020 code suitable for ROM code.

If i remember correctly ... you were the last person who compiled a complete 3.1 rom out of the sources, with the latest compiler versions ... saving some bytes here and there.
with exec.library v40.11 and "escom ag copyright" text ... including a 40.68/40.70 for a500/600/2000 models (not that 40.63 stuff).

did you know the current owner of the "rights" on aos 3.x-sources?
escom -> gateway -> and now acer ?

@thomas richter:
isn´t layers.library v45 partially based on commodore-sources ?

[olsen]

Olsen,

As a University Professor I had to teach basic copyright and patent law.  They are very complicated with an endless list of exceptions depending on certain situations.  I could list all the ones that come to mind but I just don't care enough about this thread.  :-)

However, without comparing and contrasting French and American copyright laws I have no idea what parts of copyright law are the same in both countries.  However, I can tell you from starting my own company that patents laws are very different from the US and Europe.  Having experienced that, I am skeptical copyright laws in the US are the same in France.

My super objective was really pointing out that one cannot blindly apply US Law to the rest of the world.  Though, it does seem like we do that too often.

Thanks for the reply though!

-P

Yes, this is a complicated subject. As a layperson I can barely hope to avoid misinterpreting the state of affairs, so what I picked up is probably no better than an opinion.

As for the copyright law governing American and French citizes, I believe it may actually be identical today. If I remember correctly, copyright law was harmonized rather recently both within the European Union, and between the US and the European Union.

Strangely, the expiration times were extended as a result of that process, which has certain-side effects that may not be beneficial to society as a whole, on either side of the Atlantic. Culture and its artefacts are not preserved unless somebody actively cares for them, and incentives for preserving these usually work best if there is some money to be made in doing so. If that is not possible, the works protected by copyright may be lost.

We already had that for almost all the film output of the silent movie era, which only covered some 20-30 years of the 20th century, and it was considered an ephemeral medium in the first place. Who knows what will survive 120 years of copyright protection, what will still be relevant, and what would have been relevant it if were not allowed to decay.

[olsen]

Who's selling anything here? As Cosmos has stated multiple times, all his patches are free to download. He only pulled them recently because (as the quote on his website said, anyway) someone else was selling them over on EAB.

Hell, I've been downloading his patches for years. After all this kerfluffle, I feel like I should probably send the guy a donation or something, LOL.

................................................
 
 IMHO it's because of all of this public slagging that developers get fed up and leave our community. So, a round of applause, everyone. Good job!

I have a dog in this fight, because I'm actually selling Amiga software, specially made for the platform. As nice as it is to create software, it's one thing to do it as a hobby or for personal enjoyment, but it's another thing to be able to take time off your regular job and use that time to build something complex that might call for a larger audience.

As far as I know us old time Amiga software developers are few today. Many have moved on, maybe moved up to more rewarding tasks. The thing is, if you want to spend time on a project, it will cost you. You won't be able to spend that time with your family, you won't be able to spend that time on your day job. Something has to give.

If you are satisfied with rebuilding Kickstart ROM contents, which amounts to assembling existing components, then that's fair. Some of us would, however, like to go beyond that and build new components, build better components, make things that do not exist yet, and combine that into Kickstart ROMs and Workbench distributions.

This kind of work is likely to cost money, and you cannot appropriate existing code that others have a claim to and charge money for that. This is what I'm getting at: more complex work requires that the foundations you are building upon are legit.

[olsen]

If i remember correctly ... you were the last person who compiled a complete 3.1 rom out of the sources, with the latest compiler versions ... saving some bytes here and there.
with exec.library v40.11 and "escom ag copyright" text ... including a 40.68/40.70 for a500/600/2000 models (not that 40.63 stuff).

I believe Heinz Wrobel worked on those parts, and he also built a special ROM image for the "Walker" machine, using existing components and modifications made which were needed to use the machine.

The work which I did eventually produced a complete working AmigaOS 3.1 build which runs completely native under AmigaOS. That build saved *a lot* of ROM space because intuition and other components could now be rebuilt using compiler technology not available in 1994, when the last ROM images were created by Commodore.

did you know the current owner of the "rights" on aos 3.x-sources?
escom -> gateway -> and now acer ?

I believe that Hyperion owns these rights, as a result of the lawsuit between Amiga, Inc. and Hyperion.

[Ratte]

I believe that Hyperion owns these rights, as a result of the lawsuit between Amiga, Inc. and Hyperion.

Did AmigaInc. ever owned the rights?
I thought, they only owned the brand.

As a sideeffect, the rights and patents are still at escom (acquired by gateway, acquired by acer).