
Unencumbered Open Source Commodore 64 ROMs - reidrac
https://github.com/MEGA65/open-roms
======
thought_alarm
According to this [0] reddit post, the copyright on the C64 ROMs is currently
owned by a company called Cloanto [1], whose premier product is a COM/ActiveX
currency converter, like it's 1999.

Anyway, it sounds like a fun project.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/c64/comments/6d8ss0/who_owns_the_co...](https://www.reddit.com/r/c64/comments/6d8ss0/who_owns_the_commodore_trademark_now/)

[1] [https://cloanto.com/](https://cloanto.com/)

~~~
fractallyte
Michael Battilana (Cloanto) is to Commodore as Brewster Kahle is to
Archive.org

He's genuinely tried to preserve the history of Commodore (Amiga in
particular) and make it available to everyone, in Cloanto's Amiga Forever and
C64 Forever packages. I understand there's no profit from this; it's all fan
work under the guise of commercial offerings.

If Cloanto is holding on to the copyrights, it's for good reason. Following
the demise of Commodore, there has been non-stop conflict between subsequent
owners of various parts of the IP and copyrights. At least Cloanto is
committed to preserving the Commodore legacy - the company has been around
since the 80s, and has produced some flagship Amiga software.

~~~
the-rc
I have known Michael personally for almost a quarter of a century now. Boy,
does time fly...

You might say I am biased, but I can vouch for his genuine work to preserve
the history of computing, not just Commodore or Amiga. For example, I think he
bid on an Cray that the DoE was getting rid of and had to get it shipped to
Italy for his computer museum project. Which wasn't cheap, because the thing
weighted a ton. Multiple ones, actually.

Several of his projects were definitely not for the money, like his
collaboration with a research team at University of Bologna to create drop-in
replacements for narrator.device and/or translator.library that could convert
Italian text to speech. Commodore Italy donated a bunch of machines to the
team. This was in the context of Amiga software for people with severe
disabilities, which wasn't a cash cow.

Which is also funny, because in 1997 Michael was the one in the audience that
challenged a bit Richard Stallman on software economics, during the latter's
talk at the Italian Amiga developer conference. He got RMS to say that, no,
professional software developers like him were not necessarily entitled to
make more money than a waiter. Quite a few of us among the hundreds that
witnessed it still remember the exchange.

I haven't followed the latest controversies, but I do agree that his is
nothing but fan work.

~~~
monocasa
I guess my main concern would be his bus factor. What guarantees are there
that his estate will provide the same gentleman's agreement to focus on
archiving rather a money grab?

~~~
the-rc
No guarantees, although knowing how careful he is with legal issues (see how
he might have involuntarily started the GIF wars, by asking Unisys where to
send them money for a patent license), I wouldn't be surprised if he already
thought of that. I'm sure I'd first knock on wood if he read your comment,
though.

------
jandrese
Is there not a good reference for doing a clean room implementation? These
guys seem to be trying to figure it out from base principals and are
struggling. Certainly someone must have written a book or something by now.

Maybe start here:
[http://www.uta.edu/cse/levine/fall99/cse5324/cr/clean/page1....](http://www.uta.edu/cse/levine/fall99/cse5324/cr/clean/page1.html)

~~~
tom_
I dunno, man? I think their justification sounds pretty sensible: approx 100%
of qualified C64 developers will have spent a good deal of time poring over
the original code, so there's a very good chance that any supposedly clean
room implementation will, legally speaking, be anything but. Hence all the
extra palaver.

(The only questionaible thing in my view is why they aren't using 64tass.)

------
orionblastar
They can be used in emulators and replaced on C64 boards that had the ROMs
burn out. This reminds me of the Amiga ROM Kickstart that AROS made for Amiga
68K units o run AROS in emulators or real Amigas.

I see a lot of projects like this in Europe. I guess their IP laws are slacker
than the USA?

~~~
jacobush
Maybe the US devs are slacker... haha, no I expect them to be busy making
money hand over fist.

------
monocasa
Did they get a lawyer to look at their reasoning? It reads like what you get
when software guys try to make "common sense" reasoning about IP law.

~~~
incompatible
Yeah, their argument that an "implied right" to copyrighted materials arises
just because it's widely infringed and the copyright holder hasn't sued
anybody, seems fishy. I think they are confused with trademarks. Any citations
of actual legal cases would be welcome.

This is only an aside to their actual reverse engineering work, but still.

~~~
phkahler
That whole section should just be deleted as IANAL speculation. If they're not
sure about it then it's just noise. If they were sure about it, the project
would be redundant.

