Re: Open letter to Apple ][ hackers Re: Official and LEGAL ways to emulate Apple II?

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Bryan Villados wrote:

>I seem to a problem with this logic. If you bought an Apple II+, which came
>with DOS 3.3, based on what some people are saying, each owner would then
>own TWO legal licenses of the ROM???? Even if it's legally correct, I doubt
>that's what Apple had in mind.

What they had in mind is irrelevant.

If I buy five licenses, I have five licenses.

I'm sure that at the time, Apple never imagined that the DOS 3.3 Master
would be run on a non-Apple II--but that's exactly what clone makers did,
sometimes with legal hardware (and sometimes not).

Certainly an Apple II emulator running on another host does not infringe
Apple's rights, so it constitutes "legal hardware".  If you own a System
Master disk, then you have a license to run the software contained on it
on one system at a time.

What this does not address is the //c or //e firmware, which is very
useful for running Appleworks.

The biggest problem from a hair-splitting perspective is whether or
how much latitude exists in using the contents of the //e ROM with
an emulator.

As someone else pointed out earlier, never ask a lawyer for
permission--odds are it will not be forthcoming.  Instead, go
ahead, then seek forgiveness.  Think about how this would
play in the media:  "Apple Computer shuts down teachers
using old software as a classroom aid."  Apple's (acting) CEO
would fire the head of the legal department so fast that only
NORAD could track him.  ;-)

-michael

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