New to Whdload what's The crack?

[nicholas]

Spirantho, I agree that a lot of work went into WHDLoad, but at the same time, I would like to point out as example, the impact between WHDLoad, and Amiga forever. Which is totally in favor of the latter IMO.

WHDLoad gave the real amiga users, the chance to run games that would not run on the hd, and in some cases, make them run on configurations which would never be able to run certain games. AF on the other side, put a ton of work to make the emulated Amiga available to the masses....they both use the games written by others, but to me, AF value is much higher than WHDLoad; looking at what it does and what kind of impact has.

They cost almost the same..., but one sell you the right to use the original roms and run games/WB; while the other allow you to run games that would run  on floppy, in the worst case....or run games that honestly, are a minimal part of the whole catalog of Amiga games. Among the 2, I see value in AF, but not in WHDLoad, to justify that price.

On the moral issue, I think it is pretty much a personal opinion...most of the games running on the Amiga (emulated or real) are cracked anyway...if someone has no problems to download a ton of cracked games, has even less problems to pay someone to play them from the HD; if you catch my point. I don't have cracked images; the only ADF that I have are of the games that I had on floppy, and that I still have (except some cases, where the game itself does not exist anymore, altho the receipts that I paid are still somewhere in my archive for sure).

Far from blaming anyone! This is how I am, I do not criticize, judge or do the sermon, just because I act in this way. I am simply marking the fact that once that you go on a certain route (cracked games), then the whole subsequent reasoning may be warped by the first choices made.

In a certain way, also the crackers that cracked the games put a lot of work in what they did...altho some do work for the love of doing it, others for gaining money.

Maybe I am just too old fashioned

Amiga Forever free loads on the hard work of others and sells you the right to use ROMs that as an Amiga owner you already have the right to use. It also puts money in the pocket of that shyster Bill McEwen who destroyed any chance the Amiga had of making a comeback.

WHDLoad on the other hand is all the work of its authors.

[nicholas]

WinUAE was written from the ground up to support UAE on windows; it is a frontend somehow, but has also more features than a simple skin on screen.
AF is another frontend, which goes on top of Winuae; it gives you rating system for the games, screenshots, manuals, box arts and much more (using their custom file system called rp9).

WinUAE is a lot of work; if you ever wrote an application for windows Same goes for AF. I am not sure about how much work goes into making an installer for Amiga; I leave the explanation to someone that knows this, to avoid and say something incorrect

I get your point; it is kinda like a person that write a game from the ground up, and a person that writes a mod...you won't really compare the work needed to make a full game, compared to a mod for a pre-existing game.

I know that it is not as simple, but I see similar patterns here. I never objected the usefulness of the WHDLoad project; just the moral premises and the fact that is priced as much as an application+roms+license to use an OS (WB is included in AF).

Then consider how many games you play I count about 200 games, that I actually am interested in, and probably 40 that I play now and then...I understand that it is cool to have 4 Gb of games on WHDLoad, but it is not as important to me, due the fact that I don't use them, don't need them and I never purchased ALL the existing Amiga games

I do have AF already; I buy it every other year, since the beginning, but now that I have got again a real Amiga, I am more into buying software that can be useful to me For WHDLoad I don't think that I will buy it; I don't even have it on my partition, since I use the floppy

Maybe one day, they either stop to sell it, or change their method of distribution, from license based to donation based. In that case I may see an advantage in have it.

Maybe one day you'll change your software to be donation based too?

No? Why not?

And yes I've written mission critical software for windows (And UNIX, Linux, AS/400) so I know what goes into writing software.

The effort and skill that went into slapping AF together is nothing compared to WHDLoad.

I don't play games very often btw

[nicholas]

Well, they don't free load; they bought the license to have their name on that stuff, and paid royalties; which I don't think that WHDLoad did for any of the thousands of games available

I have the Amiga again now; but before I didn't...so I found the AF offer, legit and fitting my case. I was without the Amiga until I could get one again, so now I don't really need AF anymore (except when I am traveling and do not have the miggy with me).

Amiga was killed by so  many people; mainly from whoever took the games and distributed them...no income for programmers means that nobody sell stuff....which brings to a death of the hardware, because nobody likes to sell hardware without software available

I understand your negative feelings, but keep in mind that AF is Cloanto (the guys that made C1 Text and many other apps in the past); which has nothing to do with Amiga inc and their poor choices

WHDLoad is all work of their authors, but without games doesn't do anything...AF is also work of their authors; and without roms and WB would still run (you would basically have a big DB of Amiga games, with pictures, music, box arts and manuals). I am comparing them just for the similar case in which they exist: they both piggyback on some other products, and somehow needs them to have a meaning...to exist.

WinUAE is GPL software and the  
Kickstart and Workbench come with every Amiga ever sold.

All AF does is take those things are free to all of us and slap on a crappy frontend and a price tag.  They are leeches.

I own a copy of it so I know what it consists of.

[nicholas]

I may change my software distribution paradigm; depends from the choices made at certain point in time....I participated in drivers for linux distributions too; and I never asked for a penny...I wrote utilities and never tried to make money on them, because it was quite dumb to me to ask for 1 buck for a utility used by sys admins for their operations.

If I write an application for Amiga, I would not sell it. Even less if it would need some other software for which I do not own rights to use, nor I was authorized to modify.

IF I can get the code of AF and WHDLoad, I may be able to tell how much effort goes in it, but without see the code; I can simply theorize and assume; which does nothing good in the end.

The effort was never under discussion btw

Really?

You wrote:

'WinUAE is a lot of work; if you ever wrote an application for windows Same goes for AF.

You think the crappy VB-esque front end they put together is even close to the work put into WinUAE which is free of charge and without which AF would have no product, yet you moan about WHDLoad not working without the games people have already paid for.

As I said, they are leeches that freeload on the work of others.

[nicholas]

Yes, GPL, which is different from a copyrighted game, which has to be disassembled, reverse engineered, to remove protections and make it work and install with WHDLoad. That's one of my problems in dealing with such software.

AF takes roms and AmigaOS 3.0, for which has paid licenses and rights to distribute them, to people that do not have an Amiga...by law you are required to either own the rom and the software, to use it on an emulator, or you need to buy a license, like the one that AF has. I fail to see the "leeching" here.

The front end takes time to be written; as easy as it could be, the fact that me or you would be able to make a similar frontend with the same features with visual studio, doesn't mean necessarily that is a small feature, don't you think?

I am not defending them, just pointing out that they did legally everything right, and even made the effort to make a frontend for Amiga enthusiasts. After all these people used to write software for Amiga, so they care about it, don't you think?

Now, since I have a real Amiga again, the point in using it is limited, but think about many people that wants to have LEGALLY a copy of the roms and AOS; they can actually do it thanks to AF.

Or is better to get all fro free on bit torrent? In which case I fail to see why then WHDLoad should be different.

Anyway; I simply opened up my inner thoughts here; I don't want to discourage anyone to buy WHDLoad, since it seems loved by so many people. I just want to be sure that I don't break the law in any way, or somehow break my ethical code.

WHDLoad authors have done everything "legally right" too, except they are only selling their own hard work not someone else's GPL licenced hard work.

[nicholas]

Yes, why it is so strange? Do you deal with people that live only for money? Nobody does something for free or for passion? I pity them, they must have a really sad and miserable life.

You mean like giving up a career with a huge salary to look after disabled people 24/7 for no monetary gain whatsoever?

The fact that you have a gift or skills, does not mean necessarily that you must monetize it 24/7.

What has that got to do with Cloanto MAKING MONEY by selling other people's hard work compared to WHDLoad authors selling their own work?

I have a full time job that pay a lot and give me the chance to do what I love; so I am lucky probably.

So you keep saying.

I don't know if it is made in VB or not; the UI is exactly the same even if you use Visual C++. I agree that without UAE there would be no AF, but is the same for WHDLoad: without games there would be no WHDLoad. You can still use the AF frontend without launch the games thou, as database and catalog system thou.

I am simply comparing the legality and usefulness of the 2, since they both depend from something else. To me one's price is fine, while the other seems excessive, that's all.

So selling someone elses work with a crappy frontend is "fine" but selling your own hard work is "not fine"?

SO WHDLoad is not freeloading on games? I see you having a strong opinion on AF, but I don't see you making a reasonable comment on WHDLoad thou, which makes me think that you take side, and not just analyzing the things like I am trying to do.

I am stating nothing but facts, WHDLoad is the sole work of it's authors and they are free to sell it for whatever price they want.

Your "analysis" is not based in logic at all.

I don't want to change your ideas, I express my opinion, to see if someone has arguments that could make me change my mind about this product legality

How about the law?  That enough of a reason for you?

[nicholas]

So they contacted every single company for every single game, told them that they will reverse engineer the games to remove cracks (if any), protections, change its mount point in the os, so it can be read from the hd, pack all in a file and distribute it for money?

They don't need to, in civilised countries the law quite clearly states they are allowed to provide such a service.

Even if they don't touch the compiled application, to use something written by others, you need authorization, the usual EULA terms do not allow to make derived works out of an application; I don't have handy any EULA now to copy exactly what it says, but in software development, there are standards that a re the bare minimum.

They don't create nor distribute "derived works out of an application".

Since you work in the field, as you mentioned earlier, you know this very well.

I know what the law states in civilised countries, you seemingly don't.

If they did all of this, and there are proof that they contacted whoever retains the rights and copyright for each game, I will be more than happy to consider the registration fee.

See above.

[nicholas]

I'm very sorry to have to say that I haven't been able to work out how to install WHDload and now I'm not sure I even remember how I was trying to do it. I bought a blank CF card and an IDE adaptor. I watched tutorial videos by the YouTube user retrosofer, then I inserted the CF card into a CF card to USB adaptor and tried to install the files from my laptop onto the card under Linux and/or Windows. I put the files in the root directory of my Windows partition and just couldn't manage to install them. I remember that the WHDload files had to be in the C: root directory under Windows. I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong.

Since then, I've only installed a few games and the BetterWB pack, which were all in .ADF format, onto my CF card hard drive. I've only worked out how to copy and install software which is on floppy disk, usually created with a .ADF transfer program. If only WHDload was available as a set of .ADF files then I could install it.

Can anyone explain to me simply and clearly how to install WHDload onto my CF card, or even onto a new blank CF card?

Alternatively, can anyone point out where I can still get a pre prepared CF card which already has WHDload, as well as lots of games and demos already installed onto it?

ebay, but that would be illegal in most western countries.