vice in extras

[Hans de Goede]

Warren Togami wrote:
> Hans de Goede wrote:
> 
>>>
>>
>> Because I've already asked there and the people of livna concider 
>> emulators legally more of a problem then patent encumbered software, 
>> since they live in the real free world (iow not the US) they might be 
>> right.
> 
> 
> Software patents and copyrights are entirely different.
> 

Agreed,

Distributing emulators with copyrighted rom images without permission 
isn't really gray anymore, but just plain wrong, but what about 
distributing emulators without any roms.

Take for example xmame (x.mame.net) I know the license alone is enough 
reason not to distribute it (not for commercial use), but for the sake 
of the discussion lets pretend it has an osi approved license, since it 
doesn't come with any roms (the current license even explicitly forbids 
distributing it together with roms) could we distribute this?

Notice, there are even a couple of roms which xmame can use which have 
been put in the public domain by their copyright holders.

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And what if we could get a written permession from the current copyright 
holders, I'm willing to try to find who currently owns the copyrights on 
the cbm roms, if I get a written waiver, could vice since it otherwise 
has an osi approved license be distributed then?

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And what if the current copyright holders can't be found? Commodore has 
been through a lot of hands?

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Please don't get me wrong I may seem to be trying to get Fedora to 
engage into legally gray activities but thats absolutly not what I want, 
I just want to establish where legally gray begins. And as a big fan of 
vintage computing / emulators I would like to get (some) emulators into 
Fedora Extras if this is legally ok.

Regards,

Hans