The Gentleman's Debate: Should the 1.3 ROM be made free?

[mikeymike]

It won't happen, and I'll give an example of the reason why.  Currently the rights to ancient games (talking Atari 2600, Coleco 'ancient') are being bought up for the mobile market.  Simple games with limited system requirements will always have a place in modern technology, even though while today's mobile technologies (mobile phones for example) are becoming more advanced and will someday be able to do handle more advanced software, all the old software will get its place on whatever new gadget fills the spot that mobile phones once had.

Amiga ROM to free use on the Internet *could* mean a loss of rights (maybe some, maybe all) to the operating system, and that may or may not include more recent released.  The way things are currently, everyone is holding onto software IP like it is solid gold, which may or may not be a good thing to do (I personally hope software IP gets done away completely, it's a stupid idea - patent/licence software implementations, not ideas), but that's the way it is.

I was about to say that I felt the better approach might be for Amiga Inc to just turn a blind eye to unlicenced use of Amiga 1.x kickstart ROMs, but they can lose their right to defend it in cases of their choosing if they do that.

[mikeymike]

Sounding 'harsh' and 'laying down the law' does not generally help convert people to a more legal/moral way of thinking.  In short Darrin, improve your sales pitch :-)

To the original poster, you ought to be thinking about supporting the Amiga in some way or form.  To legally use 1.x ROMs, all you need is an A500, how much on ebay, ten quid/dollars or less?  Even less at a car boot sale.  It's not too much to ask is it.  Or you could buy an emulator product which has the licenced ROMs with it.

[mikeymike]

mdwh2 wrote:

mikeymike wrote:
Amiga ROM to free use on the Internet *could* mean a loss of rights (maybe some, maybe all) to the operating system, and that may or may not include more recent released.

No it wouldn't.
I'm not sure what you are saying here, but no rights are lost, and later OS versions are competely unaffected.

Presumably you are a lawyer, not only a lawyer but Amiga Inc's lawyer who is completely familiar with the situation?

Thought not.  Perhaps you shouldn't suggest that something is definitely so (or not so), when you don't know?

Note to everyone thinking about contributing to this thread:  Let's not have a thread where people act like they're lawyers.

[mikeymike]

It is fair for mdwh2 to infer from

You hit on the problem straight away:  "infer".

[mikeymike]

mdwh2, read what I wrote again, I said "could", not "does" or "does not".  As in, not fact, possibility.  As in, "I don't know but this might be the case".

You retorted with a 'statement of fact' that you do not know to be true.

If you had responded "I doubt that because of x y and z", that would be different.

[mikeymike]

Belial6 wrote:
Ok, don't try make the argument sound invalid because I used the word 'infer'.  You live your life by infering things.  You also make thousands of 'Assumptions'.  All Science is based on 'inferning' things.

How many generally-accepted facts are there that are based on inference?

Clue:  They're not facts if they're based on inference.  They're theories, beliefs, etc.  There are commonly-accepted theories too, but they're still called theories because they haven't been proven, they just happen to fit the evidence available presently.