what's this about then...?

[recidivist]

Software piracy in the late 80s hurt the Amiga !I knew people in several different comnputer clubs and the C= fans and Atarians were PROUD of huge collections of pirated works ,the DOS/IBM people tended to buy more.Guess which system has the biggest market?Money or lack of it drives technology.
Now you think pirating sales from the few who still support Amiga with some reasonably priced items is fine?

If no one can make a profit there will be no more Amiga;blog cred does pay the rent or put food on the table.

 Should someone be able to sell illicit SAM clones if they could make garage copies ?

 

[weirdami]

If we are going to be pointing a finger about new 3.1 roms being pirated, I think it has to be an all inclusive finger.

don't include me in your pointing.  :madashell:

[dannyp1]

The Weird One Says:

"don't include me in your pointing."

You'd better make sure that some of that software that you are selling that you don't only own the right to use it.  If that is so, it is illegal for you to sell it.  In that case the finger is pointed directly at you.    :madashell:

How can people make a living selling new software when old software is being illegally sold.

Everybody in their own way is violating one law or another.  All I said was if you want to throw stones, there's a good chance that we're all in glass houses.  Yes, even weirdarama!

[Zac67]

Piracy killed the Amiga's software market and the C= "speed bumps" killed the hardware part of it. I did pirate a lot back then (hey, I was young and had no money  :-P) but have reconsidered since.

[terminator4]

I highly doubt that Amikit pays any royalties for using the roms which are licensed by Ainc still?  Or they got a stock of original Commodore 3.1 ROMS??? If Amikit provides them legally, i invite them to produce proof here on this forum.  How do I know that Cloanto is paying royalties, or if they just say so???  I found that a lot of the dealers simply burn the roms on eproms (not regular roms), and don't pay any royalties to AInc or anyone.  Also some people in this thread did ask about programming roms  in the past on A.org (this exact forum has postings on this topic too!).  So please this whole topic is a bit sketchy in 2008.  I contacted A Inc about purchasing 3.1 roms (not one pair but 10) and never heard from them.  This tells you a lot about Amiga in 2008.  This should have been thought of in the 90s when amiga was a platform and business existed.  If someone sells the roms for $20 (chips can cost $13-15) then good fo them, if they can be bothered to do this for $5 profit.

[AmiKit]

@terminator4

I don't pay royalties. I don't even sell any ROMs. :roll:

[Zac67]

I trust AmiGAkit is selling original C= or AT ROMs; since these came from official sources, royalties are included. Cloanto officially licensed the various OS versions for redistribution with AF, this has even been mentioned on the AInc website once.

There's also a slight difference in offering 'EPROMs w/ programming service, please provide data to program' or 'Kickstart 3.1 ROMs'.

[terminator4]

I meant Amiga Kit (obviously got lazy typing). :-P

[alexh]

Zac67 wrote:
I trust AmiGAkit is selling original C= or AT ROMs

I doubt very much that anyone is selling Mask ROMs (see picture) anymore.



I bet everyone, including AmigaKit, is selling EPROMs or OTP ROM. But I could be wrong.

I'm also pretty much sure Commodore had gone bankrupt (in 1994) before KS3.1 was finished.

VillageTronic was the sponsor who brought KS3.1 & OS3.1 to market.

[Fingers]

alexh wrote:

Yep, those are the same A1200 3.1 ROMs that AmigaKit sells...I bought some just like that :-)

PZ.

[terminator4]

These are very nice.  Kuddos to AmigaKit then.
I'm going to contact them if they have something like this for all my Amigas.:-D
i like to have the "original" roms not just eproms.

[Metalguy66]

I dont think piracy "killing" the amiga platform is an issue in 2008. I agree with the guy who suggested that at barely over the cost of the EPROMS, its more of a service to the community than anything.

I also dont agree with the guy who said that piracy was more predominant on the amiga than on the PC and thus had more of a negative effect on the amiga market..  From the mid 80s to early 90s I knew quite a few AMIGA users, but I knew 10 times as many non-amiga(PC,MAC,ATARI) users.. And out of all "camps" I dont know ANYONE whose software collection did not consist of a VAST MAJORITY of pirated software. Bottom line is that the death of Commodore and the decline of the AMIGA market can be blamed on stuff like software piracy, poor management, lack of advertising, etc. But the people making these accusations have been disgruntled speculators at best.

There's a vehicle parked in my driveway that hasn't moved in years. Anyone can see that it has 2 flat tires and a broken headlight. The fundamental reason for its inoperability, however, is that the engine is blown.

The real fundamental reason for the demise of Commodore, Atari, and a host of other systems is the huge change in the market caused by IBM's "open architecture" and microsoft's monopolization of it on the OS front. Companies such as Commodore could not afford to release their architecture to cloan manufacturers. (apple tried it for a while and it almost killed them).  When IBM did it, they could afford it because their business did not depend solely on the PC market. Microsoft became the officially IBM-endorsed OS for what became the basis of thousands of (relatively inexpensive) clone PC models... And the rest is history..

At the VERY best, if better managed and marketed, (disregarding a whole lot of other variables) it's possible that AMIGA could have held on to some niche market (like Video production) and stayed in business, but their chances of retaining any share of the mainstream home/personal computer market died in the late 80s due to circumstances beyond their control.. If Commodore had sold off ALOT of "dead-weight," and bought up technologies from aftermarket companies (like NewTek), they might have gone another ten years... Or more.. But thats total speculation as well...

[Tension]

alexh wrote:

Zac67 wrote:
I trust AmiGAkit is selling original C= or AT ROMs

I doubt very much that anyone is selling Mask ROMs (see picture) anymore.



I bet everyone, including AmigaKit, is selling EPROMs or OTP ROM. But I could be wrong.

I'm also pretty much sure Commodore had gone bankrupt (in 1994) before KS3.1 was finished.

VillageTronic was the sponsor who brought KS3.1 & OS3.1 to market.

Eh? The CD32 had kickstart 3.1. Where does VillageTronic come into it?