@thomas. My memory of history is that Amiga Inc *wanted* to release a 1 MB ROM with 3.5 but it was too costly for them to have the chips manufactured, not that it was technically difficult. Hence the "into fast ram instead" solution users got stuck with.
Well, that is not entirely correct. The problem is that it is not ony too costy, it is also too risky. Is the software really stable enough to be put in ROM, once and forever? Once it sits there, it is very hard to fix bugs. Looking at the history of 3.5 and also 3.9, it showed that it is not. It took four BoingBags to get the entire system approximately stable, and I'm myself still updating the shell from time to time.
A software large enough contains at least one bug...
So, the conclusion is that this ROM-image of the kickstart is really a nightmare in terms of flexibility. You cannot update. There are reasons by PCs run with a Bios - and UEFI is approximately as bad as an idea as the Kickstart was, even though it is much less complex. Look at all the UEFI bugs that were discovered in the last years, including some bugs that could brick your entire system...
So, ROMs are really bad solutions, and if they exist, they should only include a minimal image that is barely enough to boot up the system, and get everything else done by software that is easily replaced and upgraded.
Personally what i loved about Amiga was the fast boot. OS 3.5 took that feature away with the reset on cold boot. This reset only existed because Amiga Inc didn't provide the physical 1 MB ROMS.
I see nothing immoral if someone goes the expense, time and effort of making a 1 MB ROM. My argument would be that it was what the owners of 3.5 and 3.9 should have done anyway.
I don't agree with this argument. Actually, what should *really* have been done is to replace all the ROM cruft with a minimal boot rom, just large enough to support the hard disk firmware, and to initiate a soft-boot from the RDB which could include the necessary ROM modules. This would have avoided the second reset itself (because it would not have been necessary to replace anything that is not in the ROM itself), and it would have only taken approximately two additional seconds - or something in this magnitude.
How long does it take to load one MB from the harddisk? I have not measured, but I would guess about this time.
With any ROM, it would have been impossible or very expensive to provide boing bags.
Concerning the "morality" of the story: The question is not whether it is "morally OK", the question is whether it is covered by the license you got from Amiga(?) whomever(?) with the ROM. While I'm not a lawyer, I would typically expect that it disallows disecting the entire work and reproduce it.
The fact people will go to the trouble of doing all this tells us they would gladly pay for an official 1 MB. If the copyright owner won't shut up and take their money, who is to blame.
I actually come to quite the opposide conclusion. People in Amiga land want everything for free, and moan if it is not for free. In specific, a ROM solution would have meant that the boing bags would not have been for free. And I can clearly imagine the %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!-storm that would have breaken loose if people would have to pay for an upgrade ROM for correcting other's people's faults. Including my own errors.
I like to roll out new releases to users *that have already paid* with no additional costs implied. It was my fault, and I correct it for you, and you don't have to pay to get it fixed because you already paid. Having had a ROM would have made this impossible (or at least, very hard).
