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

[steve@dosius.zzn.com (Dosius)]

Rob <Rsteinmetz@mindspring.com> wrote in message news:<vbg8tqjdss71be@corp.supernews.com>...
> Dosius wrote:
> 
> > 
> > SimSystem IIe, but it has compatibility issues with all versions of
> > Windows and with certain machines' hardware.
> > 
> > I believe the copyright on the Laser 128 ROM was Central Point
> > Software, and that they are now owned by Symantec (!).
> > 
> 
> Interesting.
> 
> >  
> > The issue is that ROM code cannot be legally distributed with the
> > emulators (see earlier in the thread for word from the horse's mouth).
> >  For small things like the mouse driver this is no issue. 
> > Unfortunately, what we need is a clone of the Apple //e or //c
> > firmware.  I can alter my emulator to suit unique banking mechanisms
> > which could be required by such a ROM image.
> >  
> 
> I wonder, are we're thinking too much in terms of current practice, when 
> we should be thinking in terms of Apple's practices in 1979.

Cloning the firmware is nothing new; the Compaq PC clone released in
1982 had a clone of the IBM firmware and was legal.

> Software licenses were much simpler and less restrictive then. There may 
> be no specific restriction on the type of hardware the system software 
> (which contains ROM images and are presumable covered by the same 
> license) may be used on. In that case if you have a legal copy of DOS or 
> ProDOS you could run it on any machine you wanted to, whether it was an 
> Apple][, Mac or PC, provided you had an adequate environment.

Key words there: "adequate environment".  The goal is to create this
"adequate environment" so that Apple ][ software can run without the
Apple-copyrighted ROM code.  This is one goal the developers of Dapple
][ are working on - allow the use of Dapple ][ with or without ROMs. 
I can at least claim fair use for emulating the //e on my PC, but a
lot of other people can't.  This is for them.

-uso.