vice in extras

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 23:12:54 -0800, Michael Peters wrote:

> > > > it would be nice to migrate the vice commodore emulator package from
> > > > fedora.us to the official extras repo.
> > > >
> > > > in true oldschool-gaming-spirit,
> > > > L
> > >
> > > It was decided to not include VICE because of legal concerns. Without the
> > > various "kernal" and "basic" ROM images, the VICE suite would be
> > > useless. Including tools and docs for getting the images elsewhere (like
> > > Debian do it), would not remove the legal concerns.
> >
> > How that?
> > 
> > How can something be illegal for Fedora, if Debian doesn't consider it
> > illegal?
> > 
> > I always thought Debian was more religious about legal issues than
> > Fedora? Could it be that I am wrong?
> 
> Debian's lawyers are not Fedora's lawyers.
> Anyway - I think Debian has some stuff that is distributed only from
> non US ftp servers to avoid US distribution laws.

Well, no actual laywers were contacted with regard to VICE and Fedora
Extras. The statement

  The ROM files in the `C128', `C64', `CBM-II', `DRIVES', `PET', `PLUS4'
  `PRINTER' and `VIC20' directories are Copyright C by Commodore
  Business Machines.

at the end of a GPL header just doesn't cut it, if there is no written
consent which permits redistribution, use of trademarks and possibly even
use of the ROMs.

What may work for the Debian people would only mean "a crippled
application in Fedora Extras, which doesn't work out-of-the-box". In the
worst case, with no accompanying documentation on where to get missing ROM
image files and where to put them. That reduces the application's target
group severely.

The Debian package contains this note (somewhat out-of-date, see my
previous message in this thread):

+ This package does not contain the various ROM images needed to
+ actually use the emulators but includes a script which will attempt
+ to download them from a number of well-known locations. A corporation
+ in the Netherlands called Tulip holds the copyrights to the ROM
+ images, and redistribution is not permitted; VICE itself is
+ unencumbered.

Things like contributory infringement given, I don't think that linking an
FTP site would be a good idea. Particularly not if the linked site
explicitly points to another site which hosts copyrighted
non-distributable game images.

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