I think the Atari OS ROMs are PD, here's why.

[Mr Robot]

Not "they". "Me", and no, I'm certainly *not* offering Atari ROMs there. I'm offering Os++ and Basic++ ROMs there. Which are not identical, but work alike (or, actually, better - I hope). The *IPs* Atari had (if any) run out after 25 years, so that's done - one can use the same technical ideas by now. Also, Atari and neither Oss holds the copyright anymore, so that risk does not exist either.

We were discussing you only offering source builds of the Emulator, not your legal offerings of OS system roms, the conversation had wandered a little off topic, no one is claiming you offer the system roms for download.

 

your makefile doesn't run on a mac btw

[gozar]

Was just going to point out the need for xcode and the command line tools

It walks you through those steps. Really nothing to troubleshoot, it just works.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ijor]

For all pratical matters: How likely is it that someone will be sued due to copyright protection of the ROMs? Quite unlikely, but not due to your shady arguments. To my very knowledge, copyright of these ROMs went from Atari to OSS, and from OSS to FTE, and FTE framed their customers.

 

Where did you get that idea ???

 

OSS might had the rights for Atari Basic (might be also portions of DOS), but certainly not the whole OS.

[suspicious_milk]

Here is the section of the official circular...

 

 

 

The copyright notice had to be placed on copies or phonorecords in a way that was permanently legible to an ordinary user of the work and could not be concealed from view upon reasonable examination.

 

... A reasonable examination of ROM is looking at it.

 

Doesn't ATARI++ use a GPL'd or similar OS? Didn't the author of QMEG or Omnimon release replacement OS into the wild?

 

The OS ROMs are so well documented, an EMUTos like solution shouldn't be too hard? Just not needed since the ROMs are so easy to get.

 

So, instead of trying to convince everyone how right you are; start distributing the ROMs and we'll watch what happens.

 

Not trying insult, but this speculating is going to accomplish nothing. BTW I hope your right.

[Mr Robot]

Here is the section of the official circular...

 

 

 

The copyright notice had to be placed on copies or phonorecords in a way that was permanently legible to an ordinary user of the work and could not be concealed from view upon reasonable examination.

 

... A reasonable examination of ROM is looking at it.

 

 

Not for the average user, that would be my wife or 14 year old me. For them, reasonable examination is turning the computer on, maybe looking at the label underneath.

 

Doesn't ATARI++ use a GPL'd or similar OS? Didn't the author of QMEG or Omnimon release replacement OS into the wild?

 

 

Yes it does, the mention of Atari++ was an OT side conversation about only offering sourcecode releases.

 

So, instead of trying to convince everyone how right you are; start distributing the ROMs and we'll watch what happens.

 

Not trying insult, but this speculating is going to accomplish nothing. BTW I hope your right.

 

I'm going to, now I've asked the 'experts' and not had any new facts about the situation that I was unaware of, I'm comfortable enough in my assertions that I shall. I'll update here with a link when I do.

[+kheller2]

I would like to point out that there is a OS source file out there with a nice easy make file that will produce every known version of the A8 OS....

I wonder what is worse; distributing the binaries or the source code, in the eyes of the law.

[suspicious_milk]

Newell has released OSNXL as pubic domain; it's 800 OS compatible and it's source is available. So ... Updating this for XL/XE or emulators or any other 8-bit Atari project would seem the park of least resistance ... and the most rewarding.

 

On my phone so can't post links right now, but it's not hard to find.

[suspicious_milk]

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-212-wes-newell-newell-industries

[suspicious_milk]

https://archive.org/details/NewellIndustriesOSNXLv2

 

... and the source

[_The Doctor__]

not to mention MyBIOS, MyIDE, or other such MyOS incantations all out there to be used...

 

not sure what the point of all this is anyway... a crap ton of copy rom to ram copy to disk, translators and os replacement s abound from all kinds of sources.. If it weren't for the outside world doing what it does you wouldn't see the official translator disks... if they're not interested, don't make them be interested... certainly not at this moment in time.... it's waited all these years why can't it wait a few or so more when it's more likely to succeed or be a non issue?

Edited January 9, 2018 by _The Doctor__

[phaeron]

Whenever I hear about a new OS image released as free, the first thing I usually do is compare its line drawing routine to the stock one in OS-B or the XL/XE OS, because typically no one bothers to rewrite the line drawing routine from scratch. Unfortunately, the one in OSNXL is nearly an exact match for the OS-B routine. So while I'm grateful for the release, I would lean on the safe side by interpreting it only as a release for the parts that Newell Industries had rights for, which doesn't necessarily cover the entire image.

 

You can make the argument that you probably won't run into practical trouble redistributing the ROMs in part or in whole these days. Assuming this at your own personal risk is fine. If you're going to do this in a way that exposes other people to possible re-redistribution, however, you have the responsibility to disclose what you are doing so that others we don't agree with that assessment aren't unknowingly taking on liability by using your code. The claim of an OS being freely distributable is disputable when it has significant chunks of code that match in the binary against the Atari OS, the source is obviously reversed from the binary, and that relationship isn't noted.

 

[Mclaneinc]

In a world where there's a law suit against Lana del Ray for a progression of chord uses in a song that makes it sort of sound like another tune by another band I'd take nothing in the legal process for granted, its also ironic as the band suing her have themselves been sued for plagiarism

 

I don't even know if the old rule that code had to be a percentage changed, I think it was 30% and if less than that you could be sued still stands.....Was it even a legal rule?

 

Basically unless you have a signed, validated bit of paper from the current rights owners saying they are PD I think you could have tour ass burned and as someone else said, its not a good time to poke the bear, the last thing we need as a community is a blast of totally trivial but effective law suits against sites and repositories..

 

I doubt there's a single one of us that wants to see one of our own taken to the cleaners just so a company can make a point.

 

Paul...

Edited January 9, 2018 by Mclaneinc

[ivop]

 

It's actually two commands typed at the command line:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
brew install atari800

An average user should be able to copy and paste two lines... :-)

 

Until the domain gets hijacked, or the site gets compromised and you have just downloaded and installed malicious code without knowing it

Never feed the output of curl/wget directly to ruby/bash/perl/python/etc...

[ijor]

Btw, I forgot that the OS includes the Floating Point. That means that portions of the OS ROM were never copyright Atari in the first place. It was copyright (or at least they claimed so) SMI, whose rights now we believe belong to FTE.

 

The point to the OP, is that for legally distributing the ROM, is not enough to claim that Atari portions were always in the Public Domain, you must also claim that the Floating Point (that was only distributed under permission), was always Public Domain as well. And I'm not going to enter the technical debate if it is or it is not. Just noting the original copyright claims.

Edited January 9, 2018 by ijor

[+mytek]

In a world where there's a law suit against Lana del Ray for a progression of chord uses in a song that makes it sort of sound like another tune by another band I'd take nothing in the legal process for granted, its also ironic as the band suing her have themselves been sued for plagiarism

 

I don't even know if the old rule that code had to be a percentage changed, I think it was 30% and if less than that you could be sued still stands.....Was it even a legal rule?

 

Basically unless you have a signed, validated bit of paper from the current rights owners saying they are PD I think you could have tour ass burned and as someone else said, its not a good time to poke the bear, the last thing we need as a community is a blast of totally trivial but effective law suits against sites and repositories..

 

I doubt there's a single one of us that wants to see one of our own taken to the cleaners just so a company can make a point.

 

Paul...

 

Paul you better not be caught whistling that tune in public, else you get sued .

 

Sometimes this stuff gets carried too far me thinks, and the original intent of these protections get lost and/or impedes progress.

 

- Michael

[_The Doctor__]

This all thanks to Dizz-knee by the way... that rat got into the gov. lobbied the crap out of it and then it went world wide...

[+x=usr(1536)]

 

I'm going to assert that distribution of the Atari System ROMS is legal and that Atari do not own any copyright on them. I'm looking for peer review of my research here.

 

Since you don't seem to care for the replies that your assertion has been garnering, why not cut out the middlemen and find out for yourself?

 

Release the OS ROMs publically, attach your name and valid contact information to them, and see what happens.

 

You'll undoubtedly have every opportunity to present your opinion to the judiciary, who may or may not be in agreement. Either way, you'll find out whether you're right or not. Problem solved!

Edited January 10, 2018 by x=usr(1536)

[Kyle22]

Yeah, and also bring the wrath of Atari on us all.

 

Why didn't you JUST DO IT, put the ROMs on your web page, and SHUT UP ABOUT IT?

[jmccorm]

Yeah, and also bring the wrath of Atari on us all.

Why didn't you JUST DO IT, put the ROMs on your web page, and SHUT UP ABOUT IT?

 

I wish everyone was being nicer about this.

 

The guy had a legitimate hypothesis. He ran it by our community for peer review. (Arguably, while we might have some input on the matter, we really aren't the ideal audience to adequately review the legitimacy of copyright claims.) There really isn't much reason for us to jump his bones with unlikely doom and gloom scenarios, is there?

 

He didn't directly say that he was ready to distribute Atari 8-bit ROMs, but you know what?

 

If *I* wanted to distribute Atari's 8-bit ROMs, and I didn't have a commercial interest in it, then I'd probably do just that: I'd bundle them into a ZIP and/or put them on my website. (I mean, come on, there are websites which actively distribute 8-bit games, and they've been around for ages. There are so many people who take movies which are still in the theater and put them online, but most of the time, when they're caught, they're not paying damages to movie studios who have much stronger copyright claims and with registered copyrights.) In my estimation...

 

~87% chance nothing happens

~10% chance the emulator's developer would discover it, become concerned, ask that I don't bundle

~2% chance that my ISP or I am sent a DMCA takedown notice from Atari or from emulator's developer

~1% chance that I personally am sent a cease-and-desist letter from Atari or from emulator's developer

<0.01% chance that anything worse happens, like a demand letter asking me to admit fault and/or never do it again

 

Atari isn't going to remove the ROMs from the Internet. Atari isn't going to shut down emulation without pulling in a large number of parties from other platforms who would join in a defense of vintage platform emulation. Atari is unlikely to try to monetize their 8-bit OS due to the significant overhead in collecting very minimal revenue... but even if they did, I don't think I'd mind an official path for ROMs. If Atari directs their lawyers to defend all their intellectual property anywhere and everywhere on the Internet, they'd probably put their focus on games, and 8-bit OS ROMs would be super-low priority if it even hit their radar, but even then, see the first line... they're not going to remove the ROMs from the Internet. They're not going to stop emulator development.

 

So, back to his request for a peer review, some people seem to be reading between the lines and assuming intent.

 

Putting what he has actually asked us to the side, if he's secretly looking to create a strategy to create and sell a complete emulator and ROM bundle, we're not going to be much help. If Atari decides what he's doing is wrong, they'll go after him. It is unlikely they'll go after people who don't sell and people who don't bundle, and even then, see the reasons listed above for why it is unlikely to have any impact on hobbyists.

 

I personally am not scared that he or any other random person on the Internet is going to goad an Atari into doing anything that is going to make an impact on the 8-bit emulation scene that we have today. Now, go ahead, jump my bones and tell me why I'm horribly wrong, and how an Atari (present or future) is sure to come down on us like a ton of bricks because Joe Random in one particular country or another has upset them.

 

EDIT: I was thinking about it more, and... nope! Still not concerned that some random guy is going to get the ROMs pulled from the Internet or stop the development of Atari emulators. Although it might be fun to try to goad whomever owns Commodore's intellectual property into shutting down those filthy C64 fans and developers. But even if I tried, I don't think I could get it to happen. At best, maybe I could create a lot of drama and scare the C64 enthusiasts into fearing an impending hypothetical doom that isn't going to happen?

 

EDIT2: If I was the developer for an emulator project, I probably would go ahead and create a clause which prohibits redistribution of the emulator with OS ROMs, if only to give me the opportunity to shut it down if it became a concern, as well as to disavow any participation in someone else's operation which bundles it with ROMs and resells it.

 

EDIT3: We end up with the tradeoffs of a self-policing community. We don't have so many people testing the edges and figuring out what new things are or aren't possible. But on the positive side, it protects the core from the potential fallout of any unsuccessful edge cases. Root cause of the self-policing is uncertainty in the overall legal status of abandoned software and the emulation of abandoned hardware. "Let's not encourage people to push it because we could lose everything."

Edited January 10, 2018 by jmccorm

[Mclaneinc]

 

Paul you better not be caught whistling that tune in public, else you get sued .

 

Sometimes this stuff gets carried too far me thinks, and the original intent of these protections get lost and/or impedes progress.

 

- Michael

 

Yes its utter madness, its like trying to copyright a genre, scrolling left to right horizontal shooter...Nothing else but Defender, no other games allowed or they will be sued...Sheer lunacy..

 

As you say, impede's progress...

 

And now the band say they are not suing her...

[Mr Robot]

Yeah, and also bring the wrath of Atari on us all.

 

Why didn't you JUST DO IT, put the ROMs on your web page, and SHUT UP ABOUT IT?

 

My last post in this thread was post 80, yours is post 93. I did shut up about it.

 

YOU SHUT UP ABOUT IT!

[Mr Robot]

I wish everyone was being nicer about this.

So do I!

 

The guy had a legitimate hypothesis. He ran it by our community for peer review. (Arguably, while we might have some input on the matter, we really aren't the ideal audience to adequately review the legitimacy of copyright claims.) There really isn't much reason for us to jump his bones with unlikely doom and gloom scenarios, is there?

That was what I thought, "These are the experts on Atari, I might not know something about this that I missed when I was reading up about it. Let's ask the experts"

 

What I would *like* to do is put the roms somewhere easier to find that isn't some shady (potentially malware ridden) site in a foreign language or full of illegal roms for other systems or buried 5 levels deep on some forgotten sourceforge page. I don't intend to bundle anything with an emulator (most of them do have specific clauses in their licences that say you can't, it's been that way since the early days of MAME) just put them on a page, on a website, with lots of Atari 8-bit info, and nothing illegal on it so that I can write tutorials on setting the emulators up and point to those roms rather than the shady ones.

 

He didn't directly say that he was ready to distribute Atari 8-bit ROMs, but you know what?

 

If *I* wanted to distribute Atari's 8-bit ROMs, and I didn't have a commercial interest in it, then I'd probably do just that: I'd bundle them into a ZIP and/or put them on my website. (I mean, come on, there are websites which actively distribute 8-bit games, and they've been around for ages. There are so many people who take movies which are still in the theater and put them online, but most of the time, when they're caught, they're not paying damages to movie studios who have much stronger copyright claims and with registered copyrights.) In my estimation...

 

~87% chance nothing happens

~10% chance the emulator's developer would discover it, become concerned, ask that I don't bundle

~2% chance that my ISP or I am sent a DMCA takedown notice from Atari or from emulator's developer

~1% chance that I personally am sent a cease-and-desist letter from Atari or from emulator's developer

<0.01% chance that anything worse happens, like a demand letter asking me to admit fault and/or never do it again

Let's hope you're right

 

 

I'm not much into the illegal side of emulation, the piracy of all the games and tools. I never did it when I owned an Atari in the 80's. I'm no saint (I was a terrible pirate on the Amiga), I have all the Atari stuff now, but it doesn't really hold my attention. I'm far more interested in Public Domain software from back in the day, the demoscene, and other current homebrew development now. I would really like that to be legal, I think it should be, it *seems* like it should be. The only thing stopping that is the OS roms, and they don't appear (to my armchair lawyers eyes) to have been properly licensed in the first place and aren't registered with the copyright office and can't be now because of their age. It looks to me that these roms can be classed as public domain at best, copyright but unenforceable (eg abandoned) at worst and I'm comfortable with putting them on a webpage if that's the case.

[Mr Robot]

Yes its utter madness, its like trying to copyright a genre, scrolling left to right horizontal shooter...Nothing else but Defender, no other games allowed or they will be sued...Sheer lunacy..

 

As you say, impede's progress...

 

And now the band say they are not suing her...

Why aren't the Hollies suing her? "Creep" is "The air that I breathe" after all and they did lose that court case.

[ivop]

Hmm, I find it remarkable that a trivial chord progression like I-IV-V-v can be copyrighted at all. What's next? 12-bar blues? There must be at least 10K songs that use that progression.

[+slx]

Newell has released OSNXL as pubic domain; it's 800 OS compatible and it's source is available. So ... Updating this for XL/XE or emulators or any other 8-bit Atari project would seem the park of least resistance ... and the most rewarding.

 

On my phone so can't post links right now, but it's not hard to find.

 

Was OSNXL really made from scratch or was it more of a disassembled and patched Atari OS?