Am Samstag, den 15.09.2007, 15:50 +0300 schrieb Andrew 'Truck' Holland: > On Sa, 15 Sep 2007, Jochen Becher wrote: > > > I did some tests using QEmu (and some other PPC emulators). I believe > > QEmu would be the best choice but this should be evaluated more. I only > > tried to run the boot manager of AmigaOS 4 but AmigaONE uses hardware > > that is not supported by QEmu out-of-the-box. But the changes should be > > not that large and difficult to implement. QEmue has a nice architecture > > that allows to introduce new hardware emulation easily. > > Which leads to the big question with this, and the entire OS4 issue in > general: Is this even legal? The mess with Amiga Inc. and Hyperion is still > in the air, it looks for all intents and purposes to be yet another Amiga > Inc. disaster based on mismanagement of assets, and so forth. > Of course it is legal to write an emulator for an existing hardware. No one can stop you as long as you do not break patents - which is very unlikely if you emulate hardware in software and do not clone the hardware in hardware. Another question is if you are allowed to run AmigaOS 4 on this emulator. Of course it is not allowed to copy AmigaOS 4. You must try to buy AmigaOS 4 and this may be difficult (but is possible if older hardware breaks and one may buy AmigaOS 4 on ebay then). Licenses like "you are only allowed to run this software on certain hardware" are valid in some countries and have no consequences in others. I don't know if AmigaOS 4 has a license type of this kind and of course one should check this before we start such a project. > I, myself, have MorphOS, as I've mentioned a few times on the list here, and > it runs E-uae, so I'm happy. And yes I'd like to see it run on other > platforms, but the makers do NOT, therefore, I'm not attempting to do such. > Sure, some folks want to see it run on Mac hardware, etc etc etc - it's all a > question of intent and what is legal and what you do in your spare time and > whether that violates your conscience and someone else's rights in such a way > that it's not a problem - or that if it is, you stop. > I don't know if the copyright holders of AmigaOS 4 will be happy with this project or not. Especially because I do not know who the copyrights holds at the moment. If this is a problem I will try to solve later. AFAIK I am (legally) allowed to run AmigaOS 4 on an emulator if I own a legal copy of AmigaOS 4 and do not run this copy on another computer at the same time. This is true for Windows, MacOS X and all other software in Germany. > All in all, I'd say this topic is one that would be interesting but NOT on > this list. It's more of a separate project for people who don't mind the > implications - after all, you might be asked to stop at any point by someone, > and that someone may have the ability to stop you - or may simply be bluffing. Of course this is off topic. That's the reason why I added "OffTopic" in the title of my mail. But I have to start at one place to evaluate if there is any interest on such a project. And I don't know any better place than this mailing list. If some people say there are interested and want to help I will open an extra mailing list where we will discuss. In the meantime I would like to continue discussion on this list - there is not much traffic on this list. Kind regards, Jochen