Date   : Tue, 30 Aug 1994 12:26:40 WET DST
From   : Bonfield James <jkb@...>
Subject: Re: ROM copyright stuff.

James Fidell writes:
>I'll follow-up to this message with my own comments...

I've read your comments and agree. I've a couple of my own to add too.

The Acorn employee writes:

>It has been suggested that you produce a proposal illustrating the
>target platforms, operating system(s) and users. In addition it will
>be necessary to illustrate clearly how such an emulator will benefit
>Acorn.

One clear benefit I can think of is for PR. It gives an impression of fairness
and lack of unnecessary bureaucracy to people. However it seems that maybe
they are full of unnecessary bureaucracy after all!

Another benefit is that real owners of BBC micros no longer need to develop
any software under a restrictive system. All the tools available on a larger
machine maybe made available during BBC software development. If they feel
that the BBC is dead and gone, and that this benefit carries no weight, then
they also have no obvious reason for blocking distribution of the BBC roms.

One possible half house solution is that people with the real acorn roms
should be able to access our own roms, and that others should not. This could
perhaps be done by some encryption scheme where decryption requires some form
of access to the real ROMs themselves. Passing on information of how to
decrypt to others is probably subject to the same copyright rules as passing
on the ROMs themselves, if the decryption key was a 'derived work'.

However, I personally dislike the above idea and would much rather prefer
things to be open and public.

>Once you have produced this proposal send it to Customer.Services
>marked for the attention of David Bell. It will then be considered and
>if it is felt to be of benefit an appropriate licencing agreement will
>be drawn up.

I had mail from David Bell on this subject a long while ago (several months
before this emulator discussion list started). I outlined in detail my
intentions and wishes, including the fact that the code should be freely
available. I received no reply.

       James