I dug this up out of the usenet archives circa 1993. Not legally binding, but I thought it interesting anyway. Check out the bit I have in bold underline and the apparent CBM official posting....
Plaz
Carolyn Scheppner - CATS Mar 2 1993, 9:54 pm
In article crys...@glia.biostr.washington.edu (Crysta|) writes:
>Hello,
>We are having a bit of a war on a BBS over whether or not Kickstart 1.3 is in
>the public domain (in its floppy-based form) or if copying the floppy from a
>friend is considered copyright infringement.
This is Carolyn Scheppner, Technical Mgr. of Commodore Applications
and Technical Support (CATS).
Kickstart 1.3 is not in the public domain. None of our Kickstarts or
Workbench disks are in the public domain.
No company other than Commodore should be distributing it unless
they are buying the Kickstart disk from Commodore. It may be possible
for Commdore dealers to still order 1.3 Kickstart replacement disks.
However, if you have an A1000 and copy a friend's Kickstart because
yours went bad, I don't think anyone would have a problem with that.
>It was stated that a company called "Slipstream" distributes it as Public Domain. Non-Commodore people have been debating this to death because 1.3 is "dead"
>and they say it can not be purchased any more.
If anyone has the address and phone number of this company, please
email it to me so I can forward it to our legal department.
>Apparently the 1000 cannot use 2.0 ROMS? The debate started when someone said
>that a friend acquired a 1000, but no Kickstart 1.3 software for it and can't
>run the machine without it.
I believe you can buy third-party ROM-Your-A1000 things that will
accept the 512K 2.0 ROMs. Try DKB's "KwikStart II" 313-960-8750.
It lets you put in 1.3 AND 2.0 ROMs.
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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
/\/\ /\/\ Carolyn Scheppner - Technical Manager - CATS U.S.
( ^^ ) ( -- ) CATS - Commodore Applications and Technical Support
`--' `--' uunet!cbmvax!carolyn caro...@commodore.com BIX:cscheppner
