Amiga Games and preservation

[alx]

@CoolCPU

Welcome to A.org :-)  Time for a quick mini-essay of my own...

Pirating Amiga software comes in many different stages.  By far the worst is the people who copy new games, OSes etc.  They deserve to be maimed in some imaginative way involving CD-Rs :madashell:   Get thinking, people - Amigans are an imaginiative lot :-)  Of course, this also applied to people pirating the "Classic" games when they were popular.

Then there's the Kickstart.  Again, people (Cloanto, A inc) can make money from it, therefore pirating it will rob them of funds.

At this point, I think I should make a confession - if it wasn't for one pirated KS3.1 image I got a while ago, I wouldn't be here, about to buy Amiga hardware when OS4 comes out.  It's a long story that I'll tell you if you want, but  the money I'm about to spend will easily make up for it, and and if I don't get an A1 soon I intend to buy OS3.9 for my A1200.

Then there's all the old programs that people class as abandonware.  While it may seem ancient, the companies who own it could still use it (ie a "Classics" compilation, or converting them for use on today's PDAs).  Seeing as many programmers are willing to let sites like Back2TheRoots use their apps, asking them for permission shows that you still appriciate their work (as well as making it legal).  If the programmers cannot be traced?  I guess at the end of the day it's down to you're own moral standards (though it's obviously illegal).  What really annoys me is the way that some people seem to think they have a "right" to run old sofware - they didn't write it or even support it when it was popular, so they shouldn't expect that.

[alx]

Sure, I'd love to hear how you got into the Amiga. It sounds like you're a rather late newcomer which is unusual to see these days.

I've basically been using Amigas for as long as I can remember (my brother's A1200), and in the late '90s, I discovered UAE, and copied across the 1.3ROM, disks etc for a bit of nostalgia.  Bear in mind that I hadn't seen OS2 or higher, or even AGA, so I assumed that the Amiga was a great multimedia platform that never did that much later.

Then windoze took the system down leaving me with a few floppies to back stuff up - a lot of the Amiga stuff inclucing the ROM never made it.  So I looked on the net for a 1.3ROM (I'm not sure about the legalities of it, but the A500 was in the attic at that point).  Instead, I got slightly confused and grabbed a 3.1ROM - booted it into UAE and realised that the Amiga had progressed more than I'd thought.  Then I decided to go to Amiga.com - wow - OS3.5 and OS3.9 :-)  (a couple of years ago - no OS4).  I went back a bit later, saw what was happening with the A1/OS4, then tried the URL "amiga.org" :-)   In the meantime, I've grabbed an A1200.