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A word about LEDBlinky…
HaRuMaN:
I know arzoo puts a lot of work into this. He helped me set mine up, even developed a feature based on something I wanted, so I have no qualms whatsoever about kicking some cheddar his way. :cheers:
Turnarcades:
I suppose anyone doubting this move needs to make this consideration - give a little and continue seeing it supported or be a tightwad and watch it go away forever? There comes a point where a contribution becomes more than a little giving back and becomes a time-consuming obligation, and rightly so he has a right to get a little back. People continue to pay for Maximus Arcade which was borne under similar circumstances.
Without going into the grey area of reverse-engineering and distribution of MAME for free, comparing LEDBlinky with MAME is irrelevant as to sell the MAME core would be flat-out illegal as it is emulating existing hardware to do exactly the same job (ie ripping off an existing product), whereas software like LEDBlinky was written to perform a new task using elements of original code based on different ideas for other purposes. Would you argue that car manufacturers should pay a commission to the inventor of the wheel?
Beretta:
Turnarcades iirc you're in the UK right? in America at least there i s no law against emulators them selves..
emulation is done all the time.. not just for playing old video games it's sometimes used in computers to provide stop gap between technologies or provide legacy support of old hardware or protocols.
Turnarcades:
--- Quote from: Beretta on May 05, 2010, 12:31:29 pm ---Turnarcades iirc you're in the UK right? in America at least there i s no law against emulators them selves..
emulation is done all the time.. not just for playing old video games it's sometimes used in computers to provide stop gap between technologies or provide legacy support of old hardware or protocols.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, same situation here. However, sale of emulators (as opposed to their existence and free distribution) would likely infringe the same copyrights as would taking a product, repackaging it as your own and selling that. Not that I'm an expert, just a supposition. Arzoo's got right and reason to brand LEDBlinky as his own and the only people who have right to grumble are anyone who's code was maybe borrowed (if they can prove it and are that anal).
The point I'm making is that LEDBlinky was compiled using ideas from other sources and maybe samples of code intended for other uses and not covered by copyright, into a piece of software for a specific purpose with mostly his own contributions; it wasn't a nicked open-source or shareware program that someone's tried to claim ownership to or turn profit from.
mumble... cough.... David... Foley... ahem.
Beretta:
wow, Turnarcades nothing i said had a thing to do with LED blinky.. it was completely off topic and was only commenting about legitimacy of emulators.
did you truly get all that you wrote out of my post? i have magic fingers :P
for the record i dont use LED blinky, dont know the history of it, do not care what the author does with it.
i do think it's pretty crappy to retroactively yank older free versions but again that's their choice.
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