[uae] Re: OffTopic: Interest in other Amiga Emulators?

  • From: Jochen Becher <jochen_becher@xxxxxx>
  • To: uae@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2007 15:16:03 +0200

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


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